ABOUT

A forge, a brewery, and an animation studio have one thing in common: a craft. 'That Settles It' was developed to launch a new stout glass for our client, Forged Irish Stout, as part of a digital and physical campaign. In keeping with the theme of craftsmanship, we developed a short commercial using hand animation, a 100-year-old craft. The story and visuals were born in Ireland, and each frame was hand-drawn in South Africa. The final animation was produced in Ireland using a custom-made animation frame, shot in one take on medium format digital. Dark room-style editing was adopted in keeping with the century-old animation approach.

Our brief was to reveal a new stout glass for Forged Irish Stout. The challenge and objective were to disrupt our audience's (Guinness and general Stout fans) tunnel vision in stout selection so the work pokes fun at Guinness while bringing Forged Irish Stout to life on the biggest Beer Drinking day of the year, the Christmas of Irish Beer Drinking, St Patricks day. We highlighted the craftsmanship of Forged Irish Stout using the 100-year-old craft of hand animation, so we learned fast and developed our own equipment. The ad depicts the chaos of a pint of stout forming and settling from the start to the story to the end when all is settled, and the Stout War is settled. The ad solved the challenge by portraying a conflict of sorts between the two brands, concluding with a settled pint and a bold line: 'that settles it'.

The full project from idea to launch took just over 10 months to complete. We started with the idea of doing something true to traditional craft and executed indepth research into original style and methods of traidional animation, how its done, how its drawn, how its developed, what machinery is required, what is the method of shooting and editing it, and how close can we, in digital age, get to what they did 100 years ago when it was 1st released.

The core team was Third Mind, working on the overall core message of what we were trying to say, character development and overall moodboards and scene development; what should it look like and what story should it tell. It was decided to tell a story of the chaos that happens inside the settling pint of Nitro Stout, where the 1st pour shows the liquid in the glass as it settles, dances and rises to the top. We tried to tell the story of what might be happening inside the new Forged Irish Stout glass, as the new brand is born and the new generation of stout is being Forged.

For the look of the characters, we wanted them to be more human than cartoon, but at the same time have no personalities, so we decided not to include eyes on the faces, and for camera angles to be facing up as much as possible making the viewer feel overwhelmed and looked down upon. The biggest change and separation from traditional b&w animation we did was the choice to only draw in highlights and shoot against black background, which later turned out to be an incredible look, but absolutely riddled with issues during the animation process, but it was important to have the animation feel like the stout itself with only the highlight colours danding and moving across the page, never static.

Once we had a storybook we worked with a copywriter to write and develop the script and once that was done we brought in a Storyboard artist to take everything we gathered over the 1st 7 months into a visual storyboard and to make it real. As we worked through it, we made multiple story changes based on what was taking away from the key message and overall Art Direction. Then the storyboard animatic was ready.

While all this was happening, we were constantly on a search for the aniamtion studio who would execute the most difficult thing, the hand aniamtion itself, and we were turned down by 20+ studios across Ireland, UK, parts of EU, China and North America and just as we were about to give up we were introduced to Pocket Aniamtion Studio in South Africa who jumped at the opportunity, music to our ears. When the animatic was finished it was handed over to them to do a rough digital cut for client FIRST viewing sign off.

They then began the long process of animation. We decided to go with 12 frames per second to give it that old feel, shoot the drawn highlights onto clear cells, and to shoot it on 3 layers while separating those layers furhter than they need to, to give it true depth of field in each scene. While they animated, we looked into the animation rig itself, having a team of product designers at Third Mind. It was decided that we had to fabricate the rig ourselves as it was not avilable anywhere so over the course of 3 months we got a 1950s large format bellows film camera to keep it as true to original as possible, imported lenses for it from Japan, attached a medium format digital back it it and built a 3 meter tall frame in our workshop to shoot the animation itself. It was complete the day the South African team boarded the flight to Ireland with suitcases of finished cells, and together we shot the entire thing in just 3 long long days to meet the Paddys Day deadline. It was shot in 1 take, and only the methods available 100 years ago were used which is anything available in Dark room, no digital manipulation of frames (e.g. cleaning of dust of which there is a lot because of Black Background showing every pixel despite our best efforts), no re-shooting (and there was 1 mistake of a flipped slide in 1 of the frames which we kept).

Windmill Lane Pictures hosted multiple sound production sessions to develop the soundtrack and the final aniamtion was born.

The story begins with a hand reaching for what looks like a sword to grab it, but then it pulls down and turns out it was a beer tap handle, at the same time you hear a Bell, which is a mixture of 2 recogniseable sounds: the angelus, which is the iconic 6pm sound of Irish television, mixed with the bell sound of a hammer hitting the anvil (which was recorded at a local forge with a Blacksmith), this being a call to action. Then a quiet rural bar setting and people hear the sound again, all look up. They being to move out the bar, gather outside and march towards the sound which intensifies and becomes more clear that its a metal hitting metal. As they walk closer they kick a scarecrow wearing a Periwig, remotely resembling Arthur Guinness. A tucan (another guinness reference) thats sitting on his shoulder flies into the distance as you see a large crowd walking towards a roaring sky, representing the settling of the Nitro Stout.

Then you finally see the blacksmith hitting the hot metal on the anvil and the sounds becomes clear and explained, and as he sees the people in his forge, they offer a sacrifice of an old Irish coin, suggesting that something old is being sacrificed to create something new. The coin represents 2 things, the Irish Harp which was originally trademaked by Guinness so that the Irish State has to use it backwards on all currency and flags, and the fact that its a 4p coin, which traditionally was the price of a pint of Guinness in the old state. This sacrifice gets melted together to be turned into a sword, and as the sword lifts the Ogham text across the sword gets revealed, spelling the word McGregor. This sword is present on the McGregor family crest but also across all Forged Irish Stout branding, from logo assets to packaging, advertising, etc. This IS the moment of creation of the new world brand.

As the sword gets dipped into cold water and pulled out, it turns back into the tap handle that the animation started with and the 2nd Nitro Stout pour is executed with the bar crowd now Cheering in celebration. The final scene ends the animation with the barman putting the new generation of the stout glasses, the Forged Irish Stout pint glass, full of stout, onto the counter and all becomes peaceful again with the tag line "That Settles It" and a final hit of the blacksmith hammer in the Forged Irish Stout logo itself, animated.

In Ireland, Guinness is the dominant stout brand. Forged Irish Stout was born and is brewed in Ireland, and its goal is to become the consumer's first choice both on- and off-trade. Many new stouts have been launched in Ireland, but none has had the ambition or confidence to take Guinness head on, until now – hence the bold, confident visuals in this animation.