Hoppy holidays
In my biggest animation project to date, we brought the Energizer Bunny to the North Pole. We were challenged to continue the Hops into Culture campaign for the holidays, and there was no better place for him to hop. We dressed him in a new outfit, discovered his surprising juggling skills, and even gave the reindeer a power-up!
I’m proud of this marathon effort: the work went through many rounds of testing and rewrites. We animated and re-animated the previs, constantly optimizing. The project became a living example of a sign that hangs at Camp+King: “You’ll think of something.” Creativity really is unlimited, and we had versions and alts for nearly every frame of this spot.
It was incredibly inspiring to work with such an iconic character, and amazing to see so many teams’ work come together.
Huge credit to everyone who worked on this <3
Knead power?
The Bunny also needed to jump into culture in a more evergreen way, so we placed him in a super-serious competition where there’s no time for your batteries to die. Because this was almost entirely mid-shots of the Bunny, we had to navigate precise fine motor skills, and I put my nonverbal action directing to the test. We were also challenged to make the same spot with our international mascot, Mr. Energizer.
Knead Power with Mr. E for International audiences
On social
On the social extension of this project, my role was to creative direct the work Emmett Moore & Aisha Campbell brought forward. When they pitched ideas like a “GRWM to wrap gifts,” we had to reality-check against the production budget. We were limited to existing Bunny assets, with no new shoot or animation possible.
But I realized many of the ideas really only needed… Bunny Hands. To help sell the concept, I sewed pink fur into wearable gloves. We used them to build storyboards and propose either (a) a small budget for human-wearable Bunny Gloves to quickly make social content, or (b) time for our animator to rig CG Bunny Hands to comp in post.
It worked! We secured funds to create both CG hands and puppeteer-built gloves that matched the CG fur grooming. With those, we produced four holiday social videos, and later used the CG hands for broadcast.
