NATURAL CONNECTIONS

To help introduce Catelli Pasta’s all-natural line of products to the Canadian market, we brought a fantastical clay farm to life where we imagine all of the various forms of pasta are grown. The hand-made animation style embodies the story of Catelli’s commitment to natural ingredients and their vision for helping families craft great tasting high-quality meals.

By juxtaposing the relatable nature of a clay aesthetic with the whimsical simple shapes mimicking the iconic nature of pasta, we created a sophisticated ownable point of view that also captured the smart and friendly simplicity of Catelli. Every aspect of the project is intended to be informed by this approach and laddered up to the larger brand to help build equity in Catelli’s vision and message for the product.

This desire to capture the brand essence throughout the piece begins with obsessing the product and making choices that directly or indirectly ensure everything we do clearly heroes the product.

When developing the overall look and feel of our world, the team looked to the approachability of clay as our material foundation to provide an endearing platform for telling our natural pasta story, but executed through CGI giving the team maximum control and flexibility over the storytelling. The malleable and tactile surface compliments the clean and simple forms of both the product and the characters. While the material allowed for detailed descriptions of the pasta shapes, the simplified characters benefited from the universally understandable styling.

Everywhere we see pasta, whether growing from a tree on the farm or in the bowl at the end, the focus in on lighting and staging for the critical aspect of maximum taste appeal. Using natural and directional lighting help to clearly sculpt the distinct pasta shapes with intentional and thoughtful pasta compositions support a feeling of premium and delicious.

To speak to Catelli’s attention to detail, the clay style provided the opportunity to highlight the miniature quality of our clay scene by amplifying scale indicators like fingerprint textures in the clay. Combined with narrow depth-of field camera lens focus these details invite viewers to enter the world of Catelli.

Inspired by the graphic simplicity of the Catelli packaging and our goal of everything connecting back to the brand, the characters are also made of simple clean shapes. Throughout the character design process reduced everything to only what’s necessary to keep the characters true to our pasta obsessed vision. In contrast with our simple and clean dimensional forms, the textures poses and expression of the characters have a highly tactile clay quality. Breaking up the surfaces with micro-modeling and thumbprints and bending characters in an un-even organic way gives them that nostalgic and approachable clay animated feeling.

The creative direction emphasized making secondary elements like the tractor, the barn, the trees and even the cyclone evoke the feel of pasta. The intent is to conjure our common understanding of the method of making pasta.

To create the feeling of an immersive world the frames were stacked with multiple levels of character and story that can be revealed with each viewing. Front and center, we showcased the most important elements that should not be missed in a first viewing. Just behind that, secondary elements and animations, that while not distracting from the main narrative, add energy, fun and depth that bring the world to life.

Letting the brand drive every aspect of our decision making creates a more aligned tool for the brand marketing initiative as we’ll as provides our viewer a deeper sense of authenticity and clarity, ultimately creating a deeper connection to the brand.