Case Study

Carbon

Director Rob Foster
Production Company Carbon
Executive Producer Phil Linturn
Senior Producer Lauryn Grimando
Head of CG Frank Grecco
VFX Supervisor Blake Druery
3D Lead Sam Gierasimczuk
Concept Artist Ben Girdwood
Pitch Artists Matt Beharry, Dorian Gourg, Mario Domingo
Storyboard Artist John Singer
CG Artists Frank Grecco, Sam Gierasimczuk, Will Moody, Panopoly, Jessie Amadio, Martin Gunnarsson, Mike Huang, Francois Duchesneau
Compositors Caio Sorrentino, Panopoly

External

Brand HonorHealth
Agency Riester
Chief Creative Officer Peter Buck 
Creative Director (writer) Mike Ross            
Creative Director (art direction) Mike Rushing   
Senior Content Producer Samara Byrne
Print Producer Bill Robbins  
Chief Strategy Office Mirja Riester
Group Director Hayley Winter
Coordinator Paulina Lopez
Music California Music
VO talent Lane West
VO agent ACM Talent Agent
VO recording studio Big U Music

Directed by Carbon’s Rob Foster, we created two food and flower-filled films for HonorHealth. When we first read the scripts from the team at Riester we fell in love with their vision; Rather than cold or clinical, everything would be organic, colorful, and unexpected.

“It was a dream brief from Riester in the sense that it set an aspirational tone and it wasn’t restrictive; craft something highly creative and beautiful, but for a healthcare commercial,” says Rob. “We dove in with a pretty robust exploration early on and landed on the mindset that everything should be gorgeous, artistic, and alive. Every aspect of the campaign was developed with this as the foundation.”

Pitchframes & Early Design Exploration

“The films are also designed to be educational, using visual metaphors to carry the stories. In ‘Foodspiration’ we are reminded that healthy foods lead to healthy outcomes, and ‘Inner Universe’ shows the many intricate parts that make up the human body. In essence, HonorHealth is both a place for medical care, and somewhere you can learn to live a healthy lifestyle on a more holistic level,” ends Rob.

Starting with storyboards and concept art, we jumped into designing those visual metaphors, from carrots that look like eyes to grapes that move and breathe like lungs, as well as visualizing how the heart could come together as if it was literally a puzzle.

Next up were some of our favorite things. Led by Head of CG Frank Grecco, the team built intricate scenes and crafted complex FX techniques that were a blast to build and evolve, while adding detail and interest every step of the way. We developed complex bloom and branch rigs, atmospheric mote passes, and realistic rain droplets.”We wanted to strike the perfect balance between FX simulation and traditional key frame animation,” adds Frank.

We then set the final look in comp. “We employed deep compositing techniques to create a nuanced depth of field, even through complex, layered, and semi-transparent objects,” explains Blake Druery VFX Supervisor on ‘Foodspiration.’ “One of the key challenges for the compositing team was achieving the right ‘sunlit’ quality over the vegetation. We had to carefully balance this effect to maintain a natural, photographic look, avoiding the temptation to rely too heavily on artificial glows or diffusion. The result is a vibrant, sun-drenched feel that remains grounded in visual realism.”

Keep scrolling to see how these many moving pieces came together.