Stardust, the bicoastal integrated production and design firm, continues to celebrate its graphic roots in the latest campaign for Samsung and Cheil Worldwide. The new spots each explore one key feature of the latest Samsung Galaxy S5 phone, while expressing the value of each feature (water resistant, fast auto-focus & finger scanner) via an incredibly whimsical, fun and dynamic journey through three distinct worlds of vibrant graphics and seamless, artful transitions.
“For Stardust, this project was an opportunity to collaborate with an agency team that we have built a successful track record with,” explains Stardust Managing Director/Partner Dexton Deboree. “There’s a short-hand with returning clients and familiar brands, wherein you inherently consider the brand’s ethos, challenges and mission; and the agency’s tendencies toward effectively working through a solution. It’s a chance for us as a creative boutique to work from a full deck of information, which is one of the greatest challenges we face in moving from one project to another with new clients or brands we’re not deeply involved with. It also provided our design and animation team the opportunity to flex a set of stylistic muscles that are usually requested of some of our respected piers and competitors. A big hats off to my team, lead by Creative Director Sean Starkweather and Producer Melina Osornio for stepping up and delivering at a high level.”
According to Stardust Creative Director Sean Starkweather, this campaign had an interesting set of challenges – “quite different than other projects we’ve done before,” he says. “We worked with the client to develop the storylines, writing the scripts ourselves based solely on a basic directive. While Stardust is versed in concepting and writing, asked by our clients to do this often; crafting stories for a foreign market always proves to be more challenging than some of the more straightforward stories of our Western audience.” Starkweather points out that the campaign is being used on outdoor billboards with different formats, tall and wide, in five countries around the world. “So, we had to design and animate within a square format that could be cropped to meet different delivery specs, none of which were your traditional 16x9 or 4x3 compositions,” he adds. “We made sure to check the tall and wide crops of this square to keep our compositions working well in either case; and constantly juggled the variances in formatting to find a common composition that worked for all.”
Starkweather notes that there was “a lot of story to fit into very little time, and all had to be viewed from a distance on city streets.” He concludes: “We worked hard to make the compositions easily legible and the transitions between scenes smooth and seamless. Ultimately, it was a healthy mix of 2D, 3D, and cel animation put through several experiments and iterations that helped us deliver. We’re all very proud of the results.”
Credits
Client: Samsung Galaxy S5
Spot Title: “Galaxy S5”
Airdate: April 2014
Ad Agency: Cheil Worldwide
Chief Creative Officer: Kate Oh
Director: Liukh Yu
Art Director: Tae Jin Lim
Producer: Lee Seok Kim
Account Manager: Winnie Hwang
Production Company: Stardust
Managing Director: Dexton Deboree
Executive Producer: Sue Lee
Creative Director: Sean Starkweather
Producer: Melina Osornio
Storyboard Artists: Ken Lee, Tristyn Pease, Judah Dobin
Designers: Ken Lee, D’Ara Nazaryan, Angela Ko, Luis Salcedo, Randy South
2D Animators: Evan Stalker, Theo Alexopoulos, Laura Yilmaz, Rachel Yonda, Michael Relth, Peter Lee, Louis Morton, Max Graenitz
Compositors: Evan Stalker, Theo Alexopoulos, Michael Relth, Peter Lee
Lead Modeler: Sharlene Lin
Modeler: Piero Desopo
3D Animation, Texture & Lighting: Kevin Culhane, Evan Stalker