ABOUT

Due to the pandemic, Air Canada has struggled to maintain a positive emotional connection with its mass audience, losing top of mind consideration. To remedy this, Air Canada tapped into the universally shared experiences and emotions felt over the course of the pandemic to create a story of the power of love, and the power of believing during the magic of the holidays. To tell the story, Air Canada combined two mediums – live action and stop-motion animation. Through live action, we were able to ground the story in our target’s imagination. Through stop-animation, Air Canada was able to tell a big story on a small scale. Our main characters were central to the story. We wanted to represent two unique cultures through the actions of believable and lovable characters, from very different walks of life. First, starting in 2D, we sketched out our lead characters and environments, developing the visual language and colour treatment. With our character shapes finalized, we used 3D printers to print our heroes at the right scale, then molded them in flexible silicone rubber, with a posable armature on the inside. To create the environments, we developed multiple small-scale stages for each of the key moments of the story. Over a period of six days, we animated each shot, with each second of action taking an hour to complete. Three animators worked in different sets simultaneously, each pose and progression was carefully planned and tested, to make sure that the characters, environments, and actions all delivered the desired emotion. Finally, using 2D animation, we were able to apply facial reactions to depict joy, humor, embarrassment, flirtation, sadness, and then, ultimately, pure happiness. Using these techniques, we were able to create a seamless world that felt larger than life and connected and engaged with our audience.