Client: Zofingen Spital
Production: Maybaum Film
My role: Concept, Art Direction, Illustration, Animation
Production: Maybaum Film
My role: Concept, Art Direction, Illustration, Animation
Maybaum Film was approached by Zafingen, the main sponsor of the Swiss ice hockey club EHC Olten. They needed a logo animation for the LED rink boards of the local stadium for the upcoming season.
The brief was short and simple: animate a stick figure shooting a puck and revealing the logo.
The first real challenge was technical. The rink board projection required a specific format and deliverables, which had to be built into the project planning from day one. On top of that, the animation had to run between 10 and 15 seconds.
When Maybaum Film passed the brief on to me, I was excited right away and ideas started popping into my head. But I felt a stick figure, however well animated, would miss the chance to truly connect the audience with the sponsor and ultimately support their business.
So I took the leap and pitched an idea that went far beyond the ask: a story that grabs the audience and creates emotion, all within 15 seconds.
There was just one problem. Neither the budget nor the deadline left room for more production time or extra hands. That left one lever, and it's the one that usually eats most of a project's resources: the client's involvement in the creative process and the number of feedback rounds. So I paired my pitch with a proposal to reduce revisions to a minimum and hand over creative freedom.
We agreed on one revision round each for character design and animatic. Everything else was in my court, which allowed me to plan every production step without unforeseen shifts. The client had just one request: the character should wear the team's training jersey, showing the sponsor's design and logo, even if only in slight resemblance.
