Animade, Highly Unlikely and The LEGO Group teamed up to prove that there’s no such thing as a ‘spare’ piece or a ‘broken’ toy with LEGO: if you can think it, you can build it!

We produced four 3D digital animations to run across social media and YouTube. Our brief was simple: announce the day, get the ball rolling and embody LEGO’s brand values: Imagination, Learning, Caring, Creativity, Fun and Quality.

Build Day is an annual event that’s become a major part of LEGO’s calendar. In late December, families and fans of all ages get together and build new and imaginative toys, whether that’s with bricks from ‘86 or ‘21. They send pictures and videos of their creations to LEGO, who feature the competition winners’ entries across their channels.

We wanted families to get together and start rummaging, so the builds themselves—sets that LEGO had modified in weird and wonderful ways—take centre stage. The personalities of the builds shine through as they play and interact: look out for a startled rainbow sheep, a lion-copter staring down a subma-shark, and a hippo hilariously out of its comfort zone.

Extra details tap into the instincts of lifelong fans and encourage repeat viewing: we even drew grubby fingerprints on every brick (when you’re animating a pig hitching a ride on the back of a dragon, it’s easy to get carried away).

As you’ll know if you’ve ever stepped in it, LEGO isn’t squashy. So our digital bricks don’t move or bend. Any trickery was limited to swapping one piece for another: to make something bob in the water, we took a chunk out, then put a plank in. You could (in theory!) recreate everything you see using real-world LEGO.

Services

Design, Animatic, 3D pre-production (lighting, rigging, textures), Animation + compositing, Render + delivery, Creative direction, Production + account management

Deliverables

3 x bumper animations, 1 x master animation