How Laurie Rowan made a cutesy curmudgeon

How did you approach the scripts and creative direction for this campaign?

Our collaboration with the Telstra was great. 

The client and agency [+61 and Bear Meets Eagle On Fire] were very keen to maintain the tactility and humour they’ve established in their previous campaigns and came in with a very strong sense of what they were looking to create. 

It was a great balance for us as the infrastructure was all there, no guesswork, so it was just building on what they’d provided and trying to maximise the potential of the subtleties of the humour and really boiling down the storytelling for maximum impact.

What advantages did 3D/CG bring to the production?

I think the primary thing 3D/CG gave us was control. Colin and his environment are deceptively simple, but there are a lot of micro-expressions and tonal shifts that we had to accommodate. Our CG pipeline allowed us the luxury of assessing what was working and what wasn’t working efficiently, doing multiple iterations. It was a fast turnaround project, so this level of control and adaptability was necessary.

Colin and his environment are deceptively simple, but there are a lot of micro-expressions and tonal shifts that we had to accommodate. 

The other benefit was that it allowed us to cherry-pick which aspects from the world of stop motion and puppetry we wanted to incorporate into our visual language. The calibre of our modellers, texture artists, riggers, lighters and compers meant that we were totally confident we could maintain a tactility that was consistent with the previous in-camera Telstra campaigns.

Another way it informed our approach was to make sure we foregrounded the mechanical aspects of Colin and his clock. We wanted the audience to feel his constraints and range of motion and incorporate that into the joke. 

There’s a satisfying quality to seeing how much performance can be drawn from a simple tactile structure when you have a full awareness of its construction.

How was Colin’s character design developed to reflect his personality and role?

Colin was always defined by his reluctance, so our first consideration was to create a character that could carry that persona, but also have an initially cute appearance to subvert expectations. We designed him through a series of very practical considerations. Asking ourselves how much real estate and range of motion is required to hit just the right range of expression, we need to sell his discontent and at times surprise. 

The scripts lead the first stage of this, giving us a blueprint of the requirements, then we looked at what real-world stop motion and puppetry equivalents would be most appropriate to telegraph each aspect. This is how Colin ended up having very contrasting dimensions; a massive head to frame his small, simple, readable face, little legs to underplay his self-importance as he attempts to stomp and dominate his space and distilled forms for his wings that could perform many gestures with little adaptation. 

We chose the replacement method for his mouth and eyes, and these were the elements that required a further level of adaptability and expression.

What was the thinking behind Colin’s wardrobe choices?

Colin’s wardrobe was essentially his shoes and socks. We went through a few versions, and for a while he favoured a Cuban heel. Perhaps this felt too decadent. 

In order to appear naked, the concept of clothes has to exist in his world.

One thing that was solid in our minds from the off was that in order to appear naked, the concept of clothes has to exist in his world. Wearing shoes, and most definitely socks, is the most naked you can appear while wearing something.

 The nipple rings are just pure self-expression, like seeing a teacher outside of school wearing a bandana. Colin has an external life, and he wants you to be intrigued by it.

How important was the character’s physicality in delivering the humour?

When designing Colin, the scripts gave us such a good indication of who he is. Our interpretation was that he is fundamentally small, with grandiose ambitions that are most probably unearned. This resulted in him being very literally big-headed, to give him presence but also to allow his legs to be small and undignified by comparison. The decision to anchor his legs from the base of his pelvic bowl with no ability to bend meant that he would always have to walk and manoeuvre with an undignified slapping motion, something I particularly enjoyed.

The adverts are very short and at times consist of quite stark emotional shifts between anger, pride and disappointment. For the benefit of legibility and impact, we decided that his eyes had to snap between states and convey as much as possible in the fewest strokes. The aspect that I’m most proud of is that we gave his wings a sweeping form. We wanted his silhouette to be like that of an actor in a grand regency drama with billowing sleeves, so that a sweep of an arm (wing) would have an embedded theatricality.