When the Happy Happy Soy Boy pitch came through from agency 10 Feet Tall, it felt like a perfect match ❤️ . We wanted to push hard and really put our stamp on it.

“A psychedelic soybean paradise where legume residents ‘live‘ to become soy milk. This animated romp follows hyper-enthusiastic beans gleefully leaping into blenders, dodging cartoon chaos, and basically throwing a pre-milk rave. With a jingle catchier than a pop hit and visuals that scream Robot Chicken meets Pixar, it’s a turbocharged love letter to joy, destiny, and creamy plant-based goodness.” – Motionographer

The brief came to us already in great shape with the agency having established the tone as well as a draft of well-formed song lyrics providing the backbone for most of the scenes ideas. Some lyrics matched to obvious visual pairings but we were also given room to make our own suggestions for creative ways to happily bring these soy beans to their milky demise. A healthy back and forth with the agency creatives also allowed us to inject some of our own playful ideas into scenes such as the steadily decreasing population counter and singing beans.

Having previously created a successful festival opening film for Node Fest with a similar tone, we had already established a solid pipeline for bringing together various animation methods into a cohesive, rich, 3D environment.

To animate the large cast of lemming like Soy Beans we opted to create simple but robust, re-usable characters rig in After Effects. This is a process we have an extensive history with which allowed lead 2D Animator Jon Asquith to easily create the diverse animations required to fill out the world.

We brought the beans into our 3D environment as prerendered sprites pasted onto flat planes in Cinema 4D. While it meant we had to pre-determine movements and create some custom 3D prop integration, it also allowed us to have the characters accurately casting shadows, receiving light and nestling into the fuzzy, rolling hills.

The 3D environments have a tactile feel to them with luscious rolling hills and vibrant flora created in Cinema 4D utilising the Hair System, Volume Modelling and Redshift proxies to fill out the environment.

Edwina Joel led the way with world creation while Annika Fleur provided art direction, ensuring the already lovely brand packaging colours were filtered throughout the environment, adding various quirky props to give everything that Happy Happy Soy Boy feel!