Back to the Stars - “Let Us Stay With You” series

作品信息

作品描述

背景

As part of their "Let Us Stay With You" series , “Back to The Stars” is an emotionally charged true story of courage, lifelong love and human kindness based on a retired cosmonaut’s stay at the Ritz-Carlton Yalong Bay, Sanya (China) and six key words that summed up his memories: “remarkable life”, “heartfelt tribute”, and “spirits soar”. After learning of the man’s story, the hotel manager rallied the staff to create various surprises for him that might help ease his suffering. We were asked to tell the story of this man’s remarkable life as a renowned astronaut, portray his deep love for his wife, and show how the hotel brought him some comfort amid the sadness of losing her. We also needed to emphasize the hotel’s values, namely exceptionally attentive staff, kindness and cordiality.

目标

In 100-seconds, we needed to convey the man’s remarkable career, his deep love for his wife, and how the hotel was able to bring him some comfort amid the sadness of losing her - all the while emphasizing the hotel’s values of exceptionally attentive staff, kindness and cordiality. Telling a story in lovingly crafted 2D animation is extremely rare in China. When we received the brief with pictures, it was clear they were looking for a deep, emotional mood. We ultimately decided not to base the design on the real images to avoid it becoming a caricature; we understood that there needed to be an element of realism to the overall aesthetic. The agency gave us a synopsis and a rough storyboard that really helped to visualize what they were looking for. However, the overall time was very limited. Therefore, we had to ensure from the beginning an efficient communication and process from storyboarding, characters and background design and production to the animatic and finally the animation.

创意

Our idea was to use bold lighting to create a rich atmosphere and dramatic mood. For the characters, we aimed for simplicity and elegance in their body forms, but with enough detail to portray the age and ethnicity of the characters. The clothes needed to place the characters in specific eras and locations, starting in a 1960s Russian winter and finishing in summer in modern day China. The music was also crucial to set the emotive and nostalgic mood for the piece. Therefore, we used classical music with only a minimum of foley and external sound design, using just the instruments to reinforce the different moments and moods of the animation.

结果

We believe the client’s faith in the project serves as testament to the quality of our pitch, design, development and execution. As always, we placed great emphasis on craft, and it’s so pleasing to work with a client that values that. Ultimately it’s a really touching animated piece. It’s something that we haven’t seen too much of before in Chinese commercial work, so we’re really happy to have been given the opportunity to bring something new. In terms of the art and design, the client really trusted our vision and approved almost everything with very few revisions. They were very concerned about telling the story and highlighting the values of the hotel, so we had some back and forth in the animatic stage, which is normal as it’s the stage in the process when the client can really get a feel for the storytelling and we can craft the narrative together.