ROWER ROBSONA is an animation created for the social campaign, which aimed to reach young adults. BBDO agency went for a niche medium for the purposes of the campaign, so-called "copypasta" which is a story told over and over in the Internet, often told in the first person, using the same pattern, only changing the core of the story. Later, there were created visual concepts and 2D animation that match the written story. The agency invited Malcom XD, who is known for his talent for writing copypastas, to write this story for them. He created the story of Robson, who had an accident on a bicycle under influence of alcohol. The story is told by his cousin, who sells Robson’s bicycle, to collect money for Robson's treatment. The bike after accident looks like a percent sign, which is a direct reference to driving under the influence. My job was to draw key concepts for a story, to direct and to animate the spot. Together with studio Televisor and in cooperation with 2D animator, Jakub Szczęśniak, we set to work. Images designed in Adobe Illustrator were animated in Adobe After Effects and Toom Boom Harmony. Some animation references were also generated in Cinema 4D.

Due to the complicated storyline filled with mind-bending parallels, I had to simplify visual narration and base it around core illustration for each scene. Those illustrations combined with an excellent narration by talented Bartłomiej Topa created a spine of our way of thinking regarding telling a story. Those main blocks had to be expanded into scenes and intertwined with our voiceover carry our viewer into the rabbit hole. Sometimes when the twist was to heavy, we had to be more direct in the imagery. Other times we could carelessly create more complex animation without losing our audience.

We had our work cut out for the short timing that the project had. Our mind was set on mix of classical hand animation and After Effects keyframe style. We had to create a lot of content by hand, therefore we incorporated Cinema 4D into the workflow. Ability to quickly solve hard perspective changes as an idea, move it back and forth, made the hand animation possible at the desired level of quality in 2.5 month we had. That is 2.5 months going from a storyline outlined on one piece of paper. All explosions on the other hand were animated frame by frame. That was a lot of work .... but also awesome experience that got us back to the roots of animation just a bit more.