Beats Pills
2024
Beats asked BUCK to help them celebrate the launch of their newest version of the Beats Pill speakers, and generate hype around the new product. We worked alongside Beats and Anomaly LA to redesign the beloved Beats Pill characters for six bespoke spots.
The overall visual approach was twofold. First, we designed the characters with the speaker front and center, serving as their heads. Considering the characters had no mouths, their eyes needed to carry a lot of the performance’s weight.
We made each of the sassy characters distinguishable through their clothing and attitudes. Cameron, the oldest, has a more mature, type-A personality, while Sonia has a witty sense of humor and an ironic delivery. The youngest, Mikey, is the wildcard — always the life of the party.
To complete the visuals for these spots, we created a photorealistic environment that served as the set and background of each story. All six spots were set in the characters’ SoCal, mid-century home. We designed the whole house, and placed cameras in different places for each film. This was a great exercise in achieving a cinematic look entirely in CG, a huge victory for us in terms of technical prowess.
The storylines, created by Beats and Anomaly LA, were based on interactions between the speakers who lived in the same house.
Through the characters’ exchanges, each spot was able to highlight specific product features in a fun, comedic way.
We had a lot of fun creating these spots, even somehow getting the green light to make Mikey twerk right in front of the camera. We wanted to not only create three unique characters, but to design something that was expandable for future campaigns.
BUCK
Executive Producer
Justin Harris
Creative Direction
Fernando Bittar
Design Director
Shannon Rollins
Producer
Erin Lockard
Associate Producer
Christine Choi
Art Director
Zack Williams
2D Animation Director
Peter Kallstrom
3D Supervisor
Arvid Volz
Bill Dorais
3D Lead
Shane O'Hara
Storyboard
Shelby Chan
Design
Alex Kiesling
Victoria Kociman
Ben Nichols
Tuo Kan
Danilo Rodrigues
Florence Dagostini
Fernando Bittar
Zack Williams
Concept Art
Stan Chan
Arron Ingold
Modeling
Joy Tien
Ruxin Liang
Filipe Machado
Kat Smith
Beatrice Viguier
Ash Samet
Rui Huang
Lighting
Matt Redding
Weichieh Yu
Grace Hwang
Ruxin Liang
Joy Tien
Kat Smith
Arvid Volz
Shane O'Hara
Ylli Orana
Compositing
Navid Bagherzadeh
Ylli Orana
Chris Ribar
Arvid Volz
Joy Tien
Kat Smith
Ruxin Liang
Shane O'Hara
Weichieh Yu
Technical Animation
Anton Tokar
2D Animation
Ryoko Kondo
Editor
Brian Dieck
Marianne Karaan
Heather Bartholomae
3D Animation
Little Zoo
