Heartwarming the World

Category
Techniques

Anthony Farquhar-Smith creates marvelous moments of tasty goodness with a series of new animated films for the well-loved household brand Hershey’s, with his magic ingredient – stop motion.

Shooting in New York with Not To Scale New York and Dentsu Creative, Anthony worked with an outstanding international team, with a DOP hailing from London, and animators from Milan, Los Angeles, Portland and New York.

Four films of the campaign have been released so far: Dominoes, N’Joy, Balancing Act & Wholly Hershey’s. Keep your eyes peeled for more to come soon…

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For Anthony, it was essential to honour the rich aesthetic of food photography in each film. Without making them anthropomorphic, the tactility and authenticity of stop motion allows for the dynamic and realistic movement of the chocolate from one scene to the next. Anthony meticulously stylised each frame; the attention to detail is what makes the chocolate look so delicious and inviting.

Mark Wetzel,
Creative Director - Dentsu
“Watching Anthony and his team at Not To Scale keep five animation stages humming over three weeks was magical. The love of the craft powered this crew of specialized stop-motion animation misfits. It felt less like work and more like a tight-knit community of makers and tinkerers at play.”
Animatic
The process starts with an animatic
The building blocks
Models are built and rigged for the shoot
Shooting
Each frame is hand animated
The Results
Explosive Chocolate ... Yummy!
Anthony Farquhar-Smith,
Director
"To achieve the complex shots in ‘Wholly Hershey’s’, over a dozen pieces of broken chocolate had to be individually rigged so they could fly through the air. Each explosion took over a day to shoot."