Have you ever wanted to swing from the leaves of a beetroot tree? Maybe even sail the seas on a hollowed out cucumber boat? What about standing on top of a giant orange and mining for the delicious juice that lies inside?

Admittedly, all of these scenarios sound a little bit far fetched. But this is exactly the kind of world Keri Juice wanted to create with its recent Jumbla-produced animation.

Meeting the brief

The objective of this animation was to encapsulate the Keri Juice brand with an engaging and playful piece. This was made possible by creating a ‘World of Keri Juice’ according to Creative Director Callan Woolcock.

“Each flavour of juice has an individual character,” he says. “So, the idea was to continuously travel through this world, briefly stopping to focus on each flavour before moving onto the next.”

By doing so, Jumbla was able to demonstrate that Keri Juice injects equal measures of fun and flavour into all of its products.

Executing the animation

As opposed to many other projects, Jumbla didn’t need to create the animation’s fundamental assets because the client already had designs and a storyboard in place.

“We were used on a more technical level for this one,” reveals Cal. “We basically had three people working on the piece - an animator to composite and create camera movements, another animator for the characters, and a final designer for the 3D models."

While the single camera makes it appear like a seamless animation, transitional triggers are used to differentiate between separate sequences.

Every scene also ends with a unique reveal to not only provide distinction, but also break apart the video for each specific product.

Choosing the techniques

Seeing as the project struck a balance between 2D and 3D animation, the majority of the work was completed using Element 3D in After Effects.

“Currently, the studio is more suited to After Effects type work, as we're very into 2D motion design,” says Cal. “So, this process worked really well for us."

Some additional expertise was still required though, especially when it came to modelling and modifying certain assets.

As Cal explains: “The models were created in 3D Max and imported into After Effects as OBJ files. We also purchased the horse animation from Turbosquid, because creating and rigging this would have been an arduous task and we only had a short timeline to play with.

“But we still modified the rider of the horse to ensure it looked like the character on the product for greater brand consistency.

“From there, the rest was pretty simple.”