Recently, pet supply company Petco through its non-profit Petco Love launched Petco Love Lost (petcolove.org/lost), the nation’s largest database for lost and found pet listings. This tool to help reunite humans and their missing animal companions arrives just in time for summer, when the number of pets who go missing tends to increase. The org points out that one in three pets will become lost at some point in their lifetime — nearly 10 million per year — with many ending up in crowded shelters.
To help raise awareness of this new resource, Petco Love tapped the artists of studio SuperPixel, which has previously provided animation for McDonald’s, Samsonite Asia and CapitaLand/POP Mart’s Disney collabs and the Mandai Wildlife Reserve. The result is the CG shorts series, My Ruff Day. The first episode, which premiered at the end of may, follows a courageous pup named Boomer (voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas) who becomes separated from his family on moving day. Luckily, Good Samaritans step in and help bring them back together using Love Lost’s image technology, which instantly compares uploaded pics to its database to find potential matches.
“As an animal lover and pet parent, I know the fear of having one of them go missing. I’m proud to be a part of the Petco Love and Love Lost family and hope that My Ruff Day brings awareness to this incredible platform that reunites pets with their families,” said Thomas.
SuperPixel’s Art Director Eleosia (Eli) Charistalay shared a few insights and details from this pet-lovers project with Animation Magazine.
Animation Magazine: How did the creative team at SuperPixel approach the brief from Petco Love?
Eli Charistalay: We were excited to receive the opportunity to work on this project, since many of our team members are pet parents themselves who could relate to the campaign brief.
From the beginning, the emotional connection between pets and their families and the power of an active caring community was something that really stood out to us. We feel that aspect was really important in driving the story to create an impact. So we have been using that as a guide when approaching the script, storyboard and determining the overall film’s direction that best suited the brief.
What were your storytelling and visual inspirations for the shorts?
The stories in the video series present relatable situations that could separate pets from their families. Our team took inspiration from actual daily scenarios to make the scenes more believable.
A Pixar short film, Feast, was one of our visual inspirations. We love the memorable characters and the fantastic storytelling told through the eyes of the pet. We took that as inspiration especially when crafting scenes that showcased the different perspectives of both pets and pet parents. In addition, we utilize color theory to convey the emotions within the scenes. Warm, pleasant colors are used to introduce the family, while dark, cold colors help convey the difficult situation the family dog Boomer gets into. These can all be seen in our visual development and styleframes.
Which animation tools did you use to create this look?
We pretty much combined a mixture of different 2D and 3D software throughout our process. We used Adobe Photoshop to sketch concepts and storyboards, as well as to create assets and textures. For the production of 3D graphics, we used Autodesk Maya, Cinema 4D and Octane engine. Lastly, we used Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro for compositing, audio editing and final tweaks.
How many people worked on this project?
Altogether, we have a number of teams working in tandem on this project between 2D and 3D. There may be as many as 12 people working on the project at a time including concept artists, 2D artists, 3D artists, compositors and supervisors.
What was your biggest production challenge?
Our first concern was the tight timeline we had to work with. However, our passion for the project and for pets helped us in figuring out how to make it work. Communication is, as always, key in the development cycle. Also, an international team working from different parts of the world, many of us operate on different working hours, presents another interesting challenge. Throughout conceptualization and production, we had to rely on our team’s communication skills and trust to keep the process running smoothly.
What about the final result are you most proud of?
This was a very fun project for all of us, everyone’s happy, and we’re proud of the positive feedback from this amazing collaboration. The end result was truly rewarding to see after the time crunch! We are also proud to have pulled everything together for our first project with The Artemis Agency and Petco Love.
How do you hope viewers react to the campaign?
We believe that the campaign will successfully introduce the Love Lost platform to a wider audience of all ages through the animated series. We hope the joy that these characters have when they are successfully reunited could come across and inspire people to care and look out for their own pets and others out there.
Learn more about how Petco Love Lose works at petcolove.org/lost and see more of SuperPixel’s work at superpixel.ca.
