IBM Happy Planet

By Zim & Zou

Ogilvy Paris & New York invited Pocko Lab and artists Zim & Zou to produce an animation for IBM’s internal communications: a holiday greeting card.

The concept was to create a Happy Planet paper sculpture, based on the logo of IBM’s super computer ‘WATSON’.  

The world would be constructed entirely from paper materials and would revolve during the stop-motion animation.

Global transport, energy and exploration became key themes in the brainstorming process. In collaboration with stop-motion photographer Vincent de la Faille, we created a 40-second stop-motion animation on the themes of global transport, energy, and expoloration.

Thousands of still images were painstakingly sequenced, as Zim & Zou moved each paper object millimeter by millemeter over the course of the day.

The result was a charming animated holiday greetings card that users could share and customise with their own name.

The paper sculptures were painstakingly sequenced millimeter by millemeter over the course of the day to create the stop-motion animation

From the meticulous crafting of paper sculptures and scenery, the next phases consisted of a modifiable set-build to accommodate for the stop-motion movements, and then photographing hundreds of frames to make the final 32 second animation.

The raw files were then imported into After Effects by animator Blanca Martinez de Rituerto to add the finishing touches. The behind-the-scenes footage gives a little taste of what went into this project, with the final animation shown at the end. The result was a charming animated holiday greetings card that users could share and customise with their own name.