Albert Heijn - 2D Animation for TV commercial

This winter our studio was, together with De Kwekerij, responsible for Albert Heijn's Christmas advertisement. And the briefing was a pretty unique, but a fun one; product choreography. How does a happy-go-lucky bag of Lay's Oven Baked Crunchy Biscuits™ dance?
We did the 2D animation, motion graphics, character animation, some illustration and the motion design. This prime-time commercial ran on national television during the Christmas period. Simultaneously, the social variations ran on all of Albert Heijn's social media channels.

Albert Heijn had an extra generous promotion this year. Their 1+1+1 campaign meant that when you bought 1 item, you got 1 for free and 1 was donated to the Belgian Food Banks. So the concept of the advertisement was to have each product dance in their little triplet groups. They made a bespoke song (in Dutch!) with a Christmassy instrumental for this 40 second video.
For the animation, we used After Effects and a plug-in called Rubber Hose - specifically made to control the limbs on the characters. The illustration style was a bit tactile, to give a cosy, homely feel - since the concept of the campaign was all about charity and sharing.
Check out an x-ray of the animation file below.

Deliverables

40s Commercial for AH's television campaign

Credits

CLIENT: Albert Heijn
PRODUCTION: Mortierbrigade
ART DIRECTION & DESIGN: De Kwekerij
DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION, MOTION DESIGN: Manpaard