To celebrate Pokémon's 25th anniversary, the gaming franchise joined forces with OREO to create co-branded, limited-edition Pokémon cookie packs available online for pre-order.
Working alongside creative agencies 360i and Media Monks, Framestore's Chicago team was tasked with creating a celebratory film featuring beloved character Pikachu, that was not only authentic to the original Pokémon animation style but also made entirely from thousands of black-and-white "cookie pixels."
Beginning with a rough edit in After Effects that utilized reference footage provided by Pokémon, Cel Animators got to work hand drawing characters and environments in over 600 frames. From there, the frames were brought into Houdini to be processed and turned into the pixel grid, continuously challenging the team to strike a perfect balance between pixels large enough to be recognizable as cookies while maintaining a tight grid that preserved the fidelity and details of the drawings.
“This project was a fantastic opportunity to play in the world between custom hand drawn animation and complex CG builds,” said Framestore Creative Director Timothy Williams. “An incredibly talented team combined a story-focused approach with precise technical execution. The result was a unique visual approach to two of the world’s most instantly recognizable brands.”
Early Development Images
Houdini Exploration
Every frame of the spot was hand drawn. We created a brand new Pokemon trainer, Dakota, and then fleshed out the world around her. Every background, building, blade of grass, every image of Pikachu, and every dynamic image of Dakota were hand drawn. First as sketches. Then as clean line art. That is then translated into cookies. Around every 4-8 pixels in the line art became a cookie. Every cookie was either cream up to represent white, or biscuit up to represent black. 7000 cookies in every frame. 24 frames per second. That is around 8 million cookies. But whose counting?
Nominations
2022 Cannes Lion Shortlist (x2)
2022 One Show Merit (x3)
2022 Webby Honoree
2022 One Show Shortlist (x11)
2022 ADC Shortlist (x6)
Awards
2021 Epica Winner Bronze
2022 Andy Winner - Craft
2022 Clio - Bronze - Brand Partnership
2022 Clio - Bronze - Branded Entertainment
2022 ADC - Bronze
2022 Webby - Branded Animation
2022 Webby - Peoples Choice Branded Video
2022 AICP Winner - Integrated Campaign
2022 Effie - Bronze Snacks & Desserts