In a strange case of “Dumb Ways to Die” meets Ren & Stimpy in pastels, Melbourne animation studio Dirty Puppet and agency 10 Feet Tall showcase all the ways soy beans sacrifice themselves to be part of Happy Happy Soy Boy milk.

Cameron Gough, director at Dirty Puppet: “The brief came to us in great shape with 10 Feet Tall having established the tone as well as a draft of the song lyrics providing the backbone for most of the scenes ideas.

“Some lyrics matched to obvious visual pairings but a healthy back and forth with the agency creatives also allowed us room to make suggestions for creative ways to bring these soy beans to their milky demise.
 

“Some lyrics matched to obvious visual pairings but a healthy back and forth with the agency creatives also allowed us room to make suggestions for novel ways to bring these soy beans to their milky demise.”

 
“To animate the large cast of lemming-like soy beans we opted to create simple but robust and re-usable character rigs in After Effects. This is a process we have an extensive history with and allowed us to easily create the diverse animations required to fill out the world.

“We brought the soy bean characters into our 3D environment as pre-rendered sprites pasted onto flat planes in Cinema 4D. While it meant we had to predetermine movements and create some custom 3D prop integration, it also allowed us to have the characters accurately casting shadows, receiving light, and nestling into the fuzzy, rolling hills. The 3D environments and flora were created in Cinema 4D utilizing the Hair System, Volume Modeling and Redshift proxies.”

The track was written by composer and sound designer Nick van Cuylenburg and produced through his studio White Owl Sound in Melbourne.
 
 

 
Client: Happy Happy Foods

Agency: 10 Feet Tall
Managing Director: Joseph Meseha
ECD: Stuart Black
CD: Patrick Trethowan
Creative Services Director: George Kalogerakos
SFX: Harvey Deane

Production: Dirty Puppet
Animation Director: Cameron Gough
Art Director/Storyboard: Annika Fleur
3D Design Lead: Edwina Joel
2D Character Lead: Jon Asquith
3D Animator/Effects: Cameron Gough
Technical Assistance: Simon Bronson
Additional Illustration: Taryn Borgford

Music: White Owl
Composer: Nick van Cuylenburg
Lead Vocals: James van Cuylenburg
Soy Choir: Janet Vague