Come fly away with us in our latest animated feature for Virgin Atlantic, 'Trip'.
Over the past few months we have been working on a new inflight film for Virgin Atlantic to replace the seminal film created almost 12 years ago.
Just as the Virgin passengers are about to set off we wanted to take them on a little journey of our very own. Inspired by classic cinema, cult films and mirroring the usual apathy toward safety messages; the six-minute animation travels through a surprising and playful series of genre-based film scenes to convey all the necessary information.
As with any project the film went through various iterations of script, storyboards, designs, content and treatment. We developed our ideas for 2-3 months, working through many animatic rounds before reaching a stage where we were happy to begin production of the final animation. The previous film had such an extended run we were keen to develop a stylistic approach that was equipped to stand the test of time.
To bring our ideas to life, the A&G team combined an illustrative approach with exciting 3D and 2D animation techniques. All the character animation was produced using a traditional frame-by-frame technique – very labour intensive, especially when creating a 6 minute film, but the results look beautiful and are extremely rewarding!
Elements throughout the film were modelled in 3D; allowing us to ’wrap’ our illustrations around these models to keep the illustrative feel yet giving the scenes fantastic depth and space. This allowed all the camera angles to be planned out and ensure the 2D characters could then be animated in each scene with the addition of further textures and casted shadows.
This approach also allowed the camera to travel around and through the scenes, giving a rich and filmic feel to the animation.