For one of our latest projects, we worked alongside world-renowned creative agency McCann, as well as The University of Melbourne – the first ranked tertiary institution in Australia.

The brief was to create an animation to advertise the university’s open day – something that communicated the desire and opportunity to ‘create your own collision’ at the event. We wanted our animation to harmonise with McCann’s striking Collision Campaign for the university, which champions the celebrated institution as a learning environment where ‘great minds collide’.

The result was a beautiful and evocative animation, which communicated the energetic collaboration of the university students – and the greatness born from their intellectual collisions.

Visually representing a student's journey

The textured ribbons that sweep throughout the university represent students and open day attendees, excitedly plotting their path through the campus – and as the shot pans out from the buildings at the end of the video, we see that the ribbons have merged together to form the face of a student.

This visual communicates that Open Day attendees plot a path through campus, which has them emerge at the other end with a brand new perspective. It evokes a sense of collaboration and companionship between pupils; the students find themselves at the collision of possibility and potential.

"It was a hugely collaborative process," said Jumbla Executive Producer, Charlotte Parsons. "The McCann team ventured down to Jumbla offices to bounce creative ideas around with our creative team. The animation itself was very collaborative internally too, with our entire 3D team working on the various elements of the animation."

How it came together

Some of Jumbla's finest creatives worked together on designing the face, ribbon animation and campus – complete with some of the most recognisable features of the University, from the cloisters of the law quadrangle to the Baillieu Library.

"Jess worked solely on recreating the campus in 3D," said Jumbla Creative Director Oz Smith. "We blocked out all the buildings and then, once the camera moves were decided, we added more detail into those buildings more heavily featured… We worked on getting a good flow between shots in the animatic stage of the project, and when we were all happy with the movement we replaced the scenery with higher resolution objects.

"Everything was rendered in Octane so that we were able to work real time with the lighting and get what we were after. The ribbon was changed at the end because it was looking too eel-like, we felt we had seen this type of ribbon many times before too so we changed it to more of a smooth-paced one."

It was a great pleasure for the Jumbla team to work on this project with the team at McCann.