Polish studio Platige Image has launched a new project for Tourism Australia. Films and commercial spots created by the BAFTA-winning animation & VFX studio will be displayed as part of an international campaign aiming to encourage more people to visit Australia, featuring a digitally created Aussie mascot: a kangaroo.
Tourism Australia is the Australian Government agency responsible for attracting international visitors to Australia, both for leisure and business events. The organization is active in 15 key markets and activities include advertising, PR and media programs, trade shows and industry programs, consumer promotions, online communications and consumer research.
The org’s new ambassador is Ruby — a souvenir kangaroo brought to life by Platige Image with CGI animation. The spot prepared by the studio also features actress Rose Byrne, who became the English voice of the campaign. The new film premiered on October 19 in New York, and the campaign has since hopped to billboards in Singapore, Berlin, New York, Paris and Tokyo.
Within just the first two weeks, the campaign’s nine-minute video on YouTube was viewed by almost 20 million users, while all its videos have totted up more than 100 million views. The spot was also shown on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, one of the most popular talk shows in the U.S.
Besides the nine-minute video, the Platige Image team led by producer Nichole Ryan also delivered 60-, 30- and 15-second commercial spots. Additionally, two versions of 30-second spots and one 15-second video were made for the project collaborator, Australian national carrier Qantas Airlines.
“Michael Gracey, director of the spots commissioned by Tourism Australia and a huge fan of the work of the Polish studio ever since he saw the commercial for Citizen watches, knew that Platige Image was the perfect choice for the project,” notes Ryan. “Choosing us for the execution of these animations was prompted also by our vast experience in working for numerous famous international brands, including Aston Martin, LEGO, Samsung, etc.”
The project also included the creation of the forced perspective large-scale animated 3D billboards intended for DOOH displays at such prestigious locations as Times Square in New York, Moxy in Los Angeles and K-Pop Square in Seoul.
“Creating content for large format displays requires experience in both CG and advertising, and also a lot of streamlined computing power at one’s disposal,” explains Arek Arciszewski, VFX supervisor at Platige Image, who worked on these 3D showpieces. “We are dealing with projection mapping onto large 12K displays. Fortunately, having completed this type of projects in the past — e.g. with Samsung — we managed to plan everything ahead and create it without a hitch.”
Although Platige Image was mostly responsible for generating digital characters and their animation, the studio’s role was not limited to this task, Arciszewski addes: “We also supported the creative process of the project’s commercial parts, in direct cooperation with the agency. Moreover, we ensured that creative ideas took full advantage of the available media, technology, resources and creative power of all the artists involved in this project.”
According to Łukasz Dziedziński, the lead VFX supervisor of the project at Platige Image, creating these animations proved to be not only a challenge in and of itself, but also a genuine test of logistic skills.
“In the nine-minute video we were working with over 150 shots, including 116 digitally animated ones, all of which required setting the proper camera track, adjusting the light, as well as rendering, 3D animation and composition. Each of these steps required various people to coordinate with one another, and the client’s cooperation (to approve each subsequent step). It really was quite a challenge,” says Dziedziński.
Ryan reflects fondly on not only her team’s work on the project, but also the cooperative atmosphere across international borders that resulted in its success. “It was a case of a frankly incredible mutual understanding between all the participating sides. Despite the fact that we worked dispersed — across the whole wide world the communication was virtually perfect. This enabled us to solve any issues as they arose, and make sure that we were on the right track,” the producer shares.
See more of the studio’s work at platige.com.
