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Honey Nut Cheerios

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We were approached by hip-hop genius Hype Williams to lead the design and animation of the makeover for the Honey Nut brand. The ‘Must be the Honey’ campaign saw Nelly give the brand mascot- ‘Buzz’ the bee, a hip-hop makeover and lay down a new remixed version of his 2001 ‘Ride Wit Me’ hit. Listen out for classic lines like “There’s a party on going on in your cereal bowl” and ‘So much crunch, can you handle this?’.

TJ led the design & animation phase of the production with Hype, to produce these 3x 30sec and 3x 15sec spots. Buzz’s hip-hop dance routine was created by our friends at Laika and the spot was edited by David Blackburn at Beast. The project timeline ran for over 3 months and included a live-action shoot in Buenos Aires produced by HSI. We were tasked with bringing the spots to life, piecing all elements, and designing a campaign to showcase a whole new look for Honey Nut Cheerios. See behind the scenes of the development below!

Live-action

animation

Concept

Saatchi & Saatchi put together this exciting brief for General Mills signature cereal- ‘Honey Nut Cheerios’. Directed by hip/hop guru ‘Hype Williams’, the brief called for a help of rapper Nelly and his 2001 hit single ‘Ride Wit me’. Adjusting the phrase to ‘Must Be The Honey’.

Nelly launched the campaign giving ‘Buzz the Bee’ a hip-hop makeover. The next 3 spots see ‘Buzz’ brighten up numerous peoples breakfasts with his very own short music video.

Consisting of 3x 30sec spots and 3x 15sec cut-downs, Taylor James started by working with Hype to explore numerous concepts and environment designs, featuring references to Cheerios, Honey and Honeycomb. Our role quickly expanded from just environment design to incorporating the design & animation, and integration of the complete post production pipeline.

TJ also travelled to Buenos Aires for a 4 day shoot providing VFX supervision.

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Storyboard

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Photography/Live Action

This complete production was run through our TJ NYC office. The 3x 30sec included over 70 individual shots. With 3 different studios providing separate elements across east and west coast. We needed a tight pipeline allowing fluid integration and flexibility to accommodate feedback.

Founder and Creative director Glen Taylor lead the design and animation, which went through 5 different phases of design exploration, right up until the day of shoot.

HSI produced all the live-action footage on set in Buenos Aires. Laika continued to lead ‘Buzz’s’ character animations, and the spots were edited by ‘David Blackburn’ at Beast

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CGI Production and Animation

Nuke was used primarily for the CGI portion of the pipeline. This gave us the ability to relight and re-purpose our digital environments without having to go back and re-render. It also enabled us to setup a fluid pipeline with our Keying/Roto team, which enabled us to drop the final scripts straight into the CGI environment and still have the flexibility to edit them later on. We setup master scripts for look and feel matching the style frames created early in the process, which we then propagated to all the shots. We used After Effects for all the motion graphics and 2d plates. AE was far more suited to creating the shots without any CG, and provided a far more iterative process than could be achieved in Nuke.

Rough Cuts

Conforming each of the ad’s most definitely posed a challenge. In order to supply the client with the most up to date QuickTime, we had to ingest footage from multiple vendors, often arriving on the day of delivery. We developed a pipeline, which was quick and easy to update, and ensured that we left time in the schedule to conform.

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Results

The final spot aired across the USA, and has already created a ‘Buzz’ (excuse the pun) with consumers. This was always intended to be a fun spot that brought new personality to a well established brand. And was a great example of Taylor James ability to design and lead a large production, and integrate with multiple vendors, whilst maintaining creative excellence.

After the success of the original spots we have since added to the campaign, creating this 30 second spot for ‘Medley Crunch’.

This TJ production involved shooting the new cheerios and cluster, building the environments in CGI, adding the VFX, compositing and post. Check it out!

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Testimonial

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“We hope the Nelly/Buzz remix brings a smile to people’s faces. That’s what Honey Nut Cheerios is all about – making an everyday moment a reason to smile.”

Associate Director, Honey Nut Cheerios