With the help of Blizzard Entertainment, Golden Wolf powered up the Overwatch League Grand Finals with an epic series of team spots featuring players moving through cities and larger-than-life manifestations of their team mascots and logos.
When Riot approached Sun Creature on an action-packed series of films for League of Legends, the team knew they needed to create something that felt authentic to the close-knit gamer fan base – a group that never shies from voicing an opinion.
Knowing that each script called for dynamic action, they brought on director Maremi Watanabe for her unique voice within this narrative style. They then surrounded her with a team of specialized artists who knew the genre inside and out from a character designer who played LOL on his off hours (which were woefully few during the intense production) to a Japanese studio who helped choreograph the cinematography.
The end result: non-stop action, swerving camera moves, a few cheeky winks and some very gorgeous films.
“We can’t believe this is Kevin’s 4th year celebrating the holidays with us! Every year these spots seem to get bigger and bigger but certainly we seem to have blown the roof off this one. Regardless of the challenges, these spots are a total blast to make. We get to design, build, and film these incredible sets. Then we get to take the footage home and bring Kevin and his family into it all.
I can’t overstate how much we like this exact pipeline of comping CG animation into cinematography. Being able to work with the real world lighting in CG just makes everything look so dang good. The camera moves were particularly tricky this year around. In fact the camera kept smashing into the food and at one point there was potatoes and gravy dripping off the lens. The AC was none too happy. Another tricky bit on this one was the way the main display of food came down into the set. We basically had 200 lbs of a double decker six foot wide platter of food descend into the shot on ropes. Again, the gravy really didn’t want to cooperate. I just can’t stop imagining what Kevin’s going to get up to next year!”
Todd Mueller, Director
Now 3 holiday seasons in the running, Todd & Kylie helped turn Christmas’s arguably most unremarkable vegetable – the carrot – into a beloved ambassador for Aldi Supermarkets across the UK. First introduced in 2017, audiences watched as the plucky little carrot met Santa and over the years, found true love, had a family and, most recently, defied an evil parsinip.
Made into an adorable plushy, Kevin rose to rock star status last holiday season, inciting Black Friday levels of chaos as holiday shoppers fought to get their hands on one. How’s that for naughty and nice?
“We fell in love with this project from the very moment we saw it. Come on, a carrot who wants to meet Santa… What’s not to like? We knew that this was a spot for a grocery store so we weren’t going to be able just to stay focused on the carrot. We had to show the big Christmas spread and have as much appetizing food photography as possible. Ideally you want every shot to do one thing perfectly, we didn’t have that luxury. In nearly every shot we need to tell the story and showcase the food. That being said we couldn’t be more thrilled with the way it came out. Our goal with everything we direct is get the viewers to feel something. Not exactly an easy thing to do inside sixty seconds. In any case, hopefully people will come away feeling some Christmas spirit.”
We created this piece as the official trailer for the 2011 Sonoma International Film Festival. Meet Tipsy, a puppeteered wine bottle character enhanced with photo real animation that sings about the film festival in Sonoma. He loves film. He loves good food. And he loves to drink – a little too much.
In May 2012, an Airbnb guest, Cathrine, told us a powerful story of a trip she took to Berlin with her father, Jörg, a Berlin Wall guard at the height of the Cold War. She wanted to show him the vibrant city Berlin had become, but it was the man they met at their Airbnb apartment that changed everything for Jörg.
AWARDS
WEBBY AWARDS – “Best Online Animation (Branded)” – People’s Choice Winner
D&AD Awards – “Animation For Film Advertising” – Graphite Pencil
ADC Awards – “Advertising, Digital & Motion” – Bronze Cube
AICP Awards – “Best Animated Advertisement” – Winner
Shorty Awards – “Multi-Platform Campaign” – Finalist
PRESS
Ad Age: How Airbnb Brought Two Berlin Wall Border Guards Back Together – Lodging Website Uses True Story to Illustrate the Power of its Brand
Mashable: Airbnb Turns a Touching Berlin Wall Anniversary Story Into Ad Campaign
Adweek: VCCP, Airbnb Animated By Cold War Memories
Campaign: World’s Talking About Wall and Chain
Brandingmag: Airbnb Breaks Down Walls While Opening Up Doors
INC: What Airbnb Can Teach You About Content Strategy
Contently: How Airbnb Is Using Content Marketing To Stay On Top
“It’s been five years since Psyop made their mark on the industry with Happiness Factory — the high flying, CG fable that defined a commercial genre they helped to create. If it’s not broke, then don’t fix it, and once more, the studio plays with the textbook devices that make Psyop distinctively Psyop. In their latest work, magical imagery and a wizardry of craft assure that Enchanted Forest stands shoulder to shoulder aside a long line of Psyop classics.”
“FedEx touts its low emission vehicles and sustainability efforts with a nicely produced spot out of BBDO NY and Smuggler/Psyop. Set in an enchanted forest with a deep-voiced narrator, the spot tells the story of how a shipping giant befriended a forest. Forest backplates were created with live-action with lighting drawn from that, and then integrated with animation.”
Golden Wolf teamed up with ITV Creative to develop this energetic live action/animation promo for ITV’s coverage of their Rugby World Cup. Using the aesthetics of anime and 16bit gaming, Golden Wolf creates beautiful imagery that blurs the line between the physical and animated.
As a result of our collaboration with branding agency Bailey Lauerman, AMC Theatres introduced a whole new pre-show, on-screen experience that has been entertaining patrons as much as the movies themselves.
These 16 original pre-movie vignettes — everything from theater cell phone policies to emergency exit location information — playfully convey necessary information while creating a fan base all their own. Partnering with AMC to modernize their graphics, Psyop brought the brand to life in a zippy new world that creates excitement for the audience while still conveying important theatre policy and safety information.
To do this, we designed, scripted, and produced more than two dozen story vignettes in multiple genres, including stereoscopic versions, to keep AMC moviegoers aware, informed, and engaged.
“This story was written in response to the feeling of dread that has consumed us at times over the past few years, while watching the news, scrolling through Twitter feeds, or talking about another mass shooting, natural disaster, or disgusting revelation about elected so-called-leaders in our country.”
IGOR + VALENTINE
Director
This story hints at an ancient mythology that supersedes the finite time we’re currently living in, and is, in some small way, meant to be an antidote to that feeling of dread. It is meant to offer a brief respite from the noise and violence of our relentless news cycles.
IGOR + VALENTINE
“Don’t mess with AngryNeeson52.”
Fast Company
“Clash of Clans mobile game was most popular Super Bowl ad in 2015”
The Guardian
“Liam Neeson Channels Taken In Perfect Clash Of Clans Super Bowl Ad”
Cinemablend
A contemporary visual remix of irreverent graphics, bold type, hand-crafted animation + some spy-cam looking docu footage thrown in for good measure? Yes please. Created with love by Golden Wolf alongside TBWA Nebeko for Adidas Ultraboost ’19 for TV, print, OOH, social with a fun sprinkle of Instagram stickers thrown in for good measure.
Creating a Chameleon: Take a guided tour of the technical innovation behind our latest work for JBL with this behind-the-scenes video.
Join us behind the scenes of our latest work for JBL, highlighting the color-changing nature of their Pulse bluetooth speaker.
Technical achievements really made way for artistic style on this project. The chameleon was a masterpiece of Jonah Freidman (R&D, Psyop), combining a particle system with a curve based grooming system. We also developed a Nuke pipeline that allowed changes to the chameleon’s texture to be real-time previewed in Nuke, iterated, and then run back through the traditional CG pipeline to get all the photo-real light interaction and skin imperfections. Everyone involved did a stellar job.
“On this one we really leveraged our technology to create something new. Using Fabric Engine, we developed a set of tools that allowed artists to create a whole chameleon worth of scales. They would create scales by generating a particle flow over the surface. We took this artistically-generated particle distribution and built a computational geometry system on top of it. This system could generate each scale as a unique interlocking 3D shape for a hyper-realistic result.
The other really cool technique was using Nuke to remap the textures quickly without a full render in Arnold. This was awesome as we were able to quickly iterate until the camouflage gags worked. By creating a whole new set of tools we were able to execute a cinematic and deeply human hero who falls on his face a few times before getting to the girl of all our dreams. The result is a relatable, lovable short film about a classic anti-hero.”
-Eben Mears, Director
For this World Cup year, Nike celebrates the spirit of the Russian Street Football in their latest “Never Ask” Campaign — the art direction and animation are signed by Wizz director CRCR.
Initially the only request of Nike was to create a series of illustrations. Then the brand decided to animate these illustrations in a film taglined “The Korobka Never Asks” that celebrates the spirit of Russian street football told by the streets of Russia. The “Korobka” is a place where you don’t play for trophies, and pride is all that matters.
Nike also used the CRCR’s illustration to design a football & a basketball court (over 240 murals between 2 to 16 meters have been painted) in Moscow as part of this campaign.
This film is part of a trio of short films commissioned by Nike from the “Never Ask” campaign. The three films highlight three Russian athletes whose determination has helped them overcome obstacles in their careers – the blind runner Elena Fedoseeva, Aleksandr Maltsev the only professional synchronized swimmer in Russia & Fyodor Smolov, the soccer player in the CRCR’s film who fought his way from a bench-warmer to the leading scorer of the country.
