W!LDBRAIN, Inc. - Press Releases

W!LDBRAIN Animates Lunchables Campaign for Kraft Foods Via J. Walter Thompson
Award-Winning Animation Studio Creates New ‘Lunchables Brigade’ Icons; Treatment of 3D AnimÈ Characters with Flat Color Rendering A Fresh Look for Category

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - March 1, 2005 -- W!LDBRAIN director Phil Robinson recently led a team of artists in the creation of three new spots for Kraft Lunchables and J. Walter Thompson. The campaign, including ‘Music Mania’ (airing 2/7/05), ‘Lunchables Brigade’ (airing 3/28/05) and ‘Chicken Shake-Up’ (airing 5/2/05), features 3D animÈ-style characters that W!LDBRAIN designed and animated.

W!LDBRAIN breathed life into the Lunchables Brigade - comprised of the iconic kid characters Oscar, Maya, and Able (the last part of Lunch-Able) - and gave each kid a distinct personality and superhero look. Oscar is fun-loving, Meier is a sporty athletic girl and Able is the techno genius.

The theme of the campaign centers on the Lunchables Brigade saving kids from their boring lunches. The Lunchables Brigade monitors the world from their full-of-gadgets tree house hideout to find kids who are eating routine lunches. Once alerted to another routine lunch, they jump into action, taking off in their mobile tree house to save the day and provide Lunchables to their new friends. In these spots, the tree house transforms into a flying rocket, a walking robot, and a hot rod.

W!LDBRAIN animated each character in their 3D environments using Maya software. Rendering the characters with a toon shader created a fresh, stylized cartoon look unique to advertising in the kid’s food category.

“This project builds on W!LDBRAIN’s growing body of work in the CG character animation arena,” commented Phil Robinson, creative director of W!LDBRAIN. “The Lunchables work is a great follow up to our development of the now-famous Digger character for Lamisil. We look forward to a long-running campaign and to the further adventures of the Lunchables Brigade, saving the world one lunch at a time.”

Technologies used: Maya, After Effects.

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Founded in 1994, W!LDBRAIN (www.wildbrain.com) is an award-winning entertainment company that develops and produces unique and compelling content across the media spectrum. Powered by its distinctive pool of talented animators and directors renowned for blending traditional animation methods with state-of-the-art computer graphics, the studio and its creative team have consistently won top industry awards. In film, W!LDBRAIN has garnered numerous awards including an Annie for its computer graphics short film Hubert’s Brain and currently has a number of film projects in development. In television, the studio has produced an exceptional slate of original work, including the hit series YO GABBA GABBA!, airing weekly on Nick Jr.,

Nickelodeon’s award-winning programming block for pre-schoolers and Higglytown Heroes, the top-rated and critically acclaimed animated series airing daily on the Disney Channel. As one of the nation’s foremost producers of animated commercials, W!LDBRAIN has won Clios, Addys, BDA Awards and Annies for their commercial work, reinvigorating classic brands and developing cutting-edge spots for leading companies including The Coca-Cola Company, Honda, Kraft and Nike. Additionally, W!LDBRAIN creates and distributes collectible merchandise through its subsidiary Kidrobot, planet Earth’s premier creator and retailer of limited edition toys, clothing, mini-figures, artwork and books.