After their first major splash in late 2017, the stoner birds are back on the wire. And this time they not only get high on the green electricity provided by German energy supplier EnBW, but they also get a first-hand experience of how this energy is used to juice up modern E-Mobility services.
The “Voll auf E” campaign, from agency Jung von Matt/Neckar and director Hans-Christoph Schultheiss of Hamburg studio Sehsucht, brings another comedic script to life, in which our three birds and their furry friend, question whether they are hallucinating when they are introduced to a state of the art, dancing E-bird, who is “Rocking on E.”
Director Schultheiss said, “Being able to create a sequel for a project in the advertising industry is quite rare. I was so excited about this opportunity. Not only because of the massive success of the first film, but also because the team and I had so many more ideas and improvements in mind, both technical and creative, which we wanted to bring in this time.”
The animation was once again handled by Sehsucht Hamburg and led by Daniel Jahnel.
Sehsucht reworked the rigging, texturing and shading for the returning characters, including detailed work on the feather simulation pipeline to add believability. The team also concepted and built the new E-bird character, taking reference from automotive design, in a nod to EnBW’s plans to continue their expansion to bring E-mobility to their customers.
Another new design feature, is the fully CG environment, moving on from last year’s digital matte painting.
Daniel Jahnel, head of 3D, said, “This year we went all in and built an entire landscape based on terrain data from an area around Stuttgart, the location of EnBW’s headquarters. In order to populate the landscape we built an art directable system in Houdini that scattered over 60 different unique trees and around 100 different plants. To further enhance the level of detail, various props, vehicles and detail elements were built to create the final environment, including the BMWi3 car driving by in the first shot with an inflatable pink flamingo on its roof. The CG environment enabled us to show a full 360 degrees around our protagonists, so we were able to create a very continuous look for all shots no matter what direction we wanted to point our cameras or the time of day of the shot.
The film is running online on EnBW social media and select cinemas across Germany.
