ON / Running on clouds
Director & Art Director
The brief from sporting brand ON was to tell this story in the context of a fairy tale journey, with hidden mountain ‘giants’ depicted as adversaries to our trail-running heroes.
However, in due course, the couple prove themselves worthy, and the mountain giants become their friends.
Set in the Swiss and French Alps the simple background design is reminiscent of stylish 1920s travel posters.
At once elegant and visually stunning.
The animation style is meant to be restrained and fluid, with performances animated by hand in TV Paint and After Effects.
The first few concepts done during pitching were centred around the duality between the wide mountains and the small, almost insignificant, silhouettes of our heroes.
This project is a bid at taking a live-action mountaineering challenge and reinterpreting it with added magical elements that translate the danger, hardships, and the immense forces of nature at play.
To do so, we created a very minimal design, a palette in shades of blue, and an immense landscape to immerse the viewer within the mountain’s atmosphere.
All of this was done while keeping in mind that those landscapes would be giant – as well as populated with literal giants. There were a high number of constraints – however,
The design constraints are ultimately what makes the final project look so singular.
Limiting the amount of colors, dividing the frame, relying on the boldness of black , all of this participate in a strong visual identity
Client
ON
Agency
Brother&Son
Design and Direction
Manddy Wyckens
Animation Producer
Sharon Titmarsh
Animation
Ludivine Berthouloux, Lea Justum & Michelle Chan
After-FX and Compositing
Ignatz Johnson-Higham
Editor
Nic Gill
Production
STUDIO AKA