Laposta: Using Photorealistic Character Designs to Tell a Brand’s Story

In the era of the metaverse and artificial intelligence, it's crucial for companies to revolutionise their approach to traditional advertising by incorporating mixed media. Laposta, a creative agency with offices in Buenos Aires and Mexico City, has taken on this challenge and is helping its clients worldwide to create stunning photorealistic character designs, animations, and VFX that generate impressive impact and revenue.

Laposta boasts an in-house team of seasoned professionals with a global reach. In 2022, the agency led successful campaigns for some of the world's largest brands, designing animated characters to create a more relatable and tangible identity and strengthen their connection with their audience. 

Let’s take a look at some of the most outstanding projects of last year:

El Corte Inglés- Child Deer

El Corte Ingles, Spain's largest and most renowned mega store chain, creates a highly anticipated Christmas commercial every year that generates buzz among Spanish audiences. In 2022, Laposta was given the prestigious task of producing the commercial.

The challenge was to create a realistic yet magical child deer that would feature prominently in a 60-second cinematic Christmas story. The relationship between the deer and the lead girl was central to the campaign's concept and Laposta used CGI to create an expressive and lifelike deer that would evoke empathy.

The client was pleased with the initial design, but Maxi, the director, took the project to the next level by creating a two-minute film that was touching and heartwarming, yet too long for the commercial. 

El Corte Inglés wanted to replicate the same emotional tone in just 60 seconds, and with only one month between the shoot and the final version, Laposta had to double the team to meet the deadline. 

The constant feedback and collaboration between the director and the client produced one of the best campaigns of the year.

Procter & Gamble- Dandruff Monster

Creating a character for a Head & Shoulders commercial was one of the most challenging projects that Laposta has ever undertaken. 

A Dubai-based agency and production company approached Laposta with a script and several character designs that had been rejected by the client, P&G.

To make the character stand out, Laposta suggested a unique concept - a character made entirely out of dandruff. After the concept was approved, the team began the research phase, studying the appearance and behaviour of dandruff to make the character look as realistic as possible. They also had to decide on the character's personality and which elements of its body would stand out.

The character had to grow in size and age throughout the commercial to demonstrate how uncomfortable and irritating it is to live with dandruff. Laposta designed three character stages, and the team added the dandruff scales manually, one by one, all over the character's body.

The animation was a challenging aspect of the project, as the dandruff character had to interact with real people, and the animators had to calculate the space occupied by each character in the scene. The simulation team had to design a solution to avoid the scales colliding, which involved adjusting each dandruff scale to be stiff in the part that was attached to the character's body and softer on the external side to enable a natural movement.

Laposta overcame all of these challenges and delivered an exceptional character that was integral to the success of the Head & Shoulders commercial.

Goya- Coquito

This character was created at the same time of the child deer for El Corte Inglés Christmas campaign.

For Goya, the famous American foods brand, Laposta had the goal to create a cute character that evoked the Christmas spirit. The winning concept was a gingerbread dancing biscuit that could perform funny and recognisable dance choreographies. 

Laposta’s animation team delivered videos with different famous dance routines, and the director and the agency could choose from a variety of funny acts. The first playblast was hilarious. A total success. 

The lighting team had some challenges managing the movement of the lights and the colour-grading, but these obstacles were overcome in time.

GAIA- Animated furniture

For GAIA, Laposta brought furniture to life by converting them into animated characters. The aim of this creative approach was to appeal to customers who were looking to replace their old furniture.

Laposta experimented with various types of home furnishings before selecting a lamp, a small desk table, and a sofa to be transformed into animated characters. However, the team faced a significant challenge when it came to making these inanimate objects move and walk convincingly.

The lamp proved to be the easiest to animate, but the team had to get creative when it came to the small desk table and the sofa. The director decided to add a thousand legs to the table, while the sofa presented even greater difficulties. After considering various options such as adding legs and tentacles, the team ultimately settled on making the sofa move like a snail.

Laposta's innovative campaign successfully brought attention to GAIA's furniture offerings and demonstrated the company's commitment to creativity and innovation.

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2023 will be another successful year for Laposta, with more challenging campaigns across different markets that will prove the creativity and talent of the team behind them.

"Our team is dedicated to delivering cutting-edge campaigns that help our clients to remain ahead of the curve," said Pablo Tufaro, executive producer at Laposta. "We pride ourselves on our ability to think outside the box and come up with fresh, innovative ideas that set our clients apart from the competition."

With a focus on innovation and a proven track record of success, Laposta is well positioned to deliver yet another year of impressive results and industry-leading campaigns this year.