For this project, we were tasked with creating a modern and fresh take on The Salvation Army’s seasonal Red Kettle advertisements. They needed to reference the long history of the Salvation Army, have the nostalgic warmth of the holiday spirit, but also be clearly talking about the present and situations that still resonate for individuals in 2017.

Our starting point visually and creatively was very rooted in children’s storybooks and 2D illustration. After reading the scripts and immersing ourselves into the world of traditional, seasonal tales, we decided that the storybook model was the perfect device to take us through each one of these stories, further making them all part of the same book: “The Fight for Good.”

We wanted our characters to evoke empathy and be relatable to all regions and ages, so we aimed for a delicate design approach and elegant movement.

For the environments, we studied images of cities and towns across the United States to concept three non-specific settings that would nevertheless illustrate the difference in regions.

We wanted to create a rich and magical world that we could gradually unveil through our continuous camera moves.

From homely indoor environments to cold or lonely outdoor settings, the use of 3D allowed us to create a cinematic atmosphere, maximising the depth of our scenes and elevating the characters and stories that inhabit it.

One of the most satisfying experiences of the whole project was recording the score with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and our composer Pierre O’Reilly, adding the perfect punctuation to the end of this project.