EYLEA – A BEAUTIFUL PAIR
Role: Director
Studio: The Mill
Agency: Intouch
We were recently invited to share our creative approach to a new treatment for macular degeneration. Also know as AMD, it’s the leading cause of vision loss in people over the age of 60. Scary stuff!
The goal of the campaign was to personify a “beautiful pair” of eyes as an inseparable, loving couple. The problem is that disembodied eyeballs are not particularly attractive, sexy, or cute! So how do you bring them to life? This stat from some initial research caught my attention:
“The size of the human adult eye is approximately 24.2mm with no significant difference between sexes and age groups.”
So what if our eyeball-inspired characters existed in a world scaled to their 24mm “head” size? What would that look like? We then began to consider the miniatures that our Baby Boomer demographic would be familiar with: model train sets, dioramas, dollhouses, etc.
During the hustle of our quick turn pitch, we phoned our friends at Nix + Gerber who were happy to supply a few miniature set pieces outlined in the script. Our photos became the environments for our CG character designs to inhabit, and thus married the beautiful pair with a photoreal, miniature world…and created a little magic in the process!
CHARACTER DESIGN
THE INTERVIEW
During the development of our character designs, we were inspired by the couples interviews in When Harry Met Sally, as well as the mockumentary format of testimonials in sitcoms (The Office, Parks & Rec, Modern Family). What a great way to get to know our “Beautiful Pair!” So I wrote, recorded, and cut the following scratch track to help add a little more personality to our presentation:
SET DESIGN
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Animation Company: Mill+
Executive Producer: Andy Sommerville
Mill+ Director: Jeff Boddy
Head of CG: Adam Carroll
Storyboards & Character Design: Anzie Lee
Design & Illustration: Matt Darnall
3D Artists: Ross Scroble, Mari Chung, Jordan Carroll, Jamie O'HaraMiniature Fabrication: Nix + Gerber