Nissan - Design In Motion

When we were approached by Unit9 and Dark Horses to design some frames for their latest Nissan campaign, we didn’t realise it was for a life-sized Zoetrope in a remote desert!

Tasked with designing the 150 illustrations, we began by storyboarding and sketching out concept frames of the car and the kanji (a system of Japanese writing). Brush textures were imperative to the consistency of Nissan’s brand aesthetic, so we designed with our own paint brushes via TVPaint, a 2D software for frame-by-frame animation. The final step was bringing the hand-drawn sequences together, which was completed within After Effects. 

The brand’s tagline, ‘Designed to make you feel electric’ features at the end of the film, but it’s a sentiment which also echoed through the entire animation process.

CREDITS

Agency - Dark Horses

Producer - Leah Wattley

Executive Creative Director - Steve Howell

Chief Strategy Officer - Matt Readman

Creative Directors - Adam Burns, Paco Lopez

Head of Production - Andy Walsh

Production Company - UNIT9

Films Director - James Medcraft 

Creative Director - Sean Pruen 

DOP - Carl Burke 

Executive Producer - Greg Hemes 

Producer - Geoff Stickler 

Edit - Alex Burt 

Service Company - Blur Films 

Animation Studio - Blind Pig

Design & Animation - Christine Peters

Producer - Ollie Ireland

Executive Producer - Thierry Levy

Post Production - Absolute

Colour - Juliette Wileman 

Flame - Daniel Adams, Eldon Snelgrove, Antonio Jimenez 

Nuke - Harvey David, Tommy Coulter Listen

Producer - Ollie Ireland

Sound Design - Sounds Good Audio