OG's BLOG

This frame is from a commercial for the National Lottery of England called “The Big Win”, and it’s by my buddies over at StudioAKA in London. The spot is a couple of years old, so I’m sure most of you have seen it (especially since I had talked about it at AnimWatch). But it’s such a charming clip, I think it bears review, plus I think there is a lot to learn about creativity in it.

First, go see it:

StudioAKA’s official website
-or-
Direct link to The Big Win (I don’t know how long this will function…)

Now – if someone had come to me and asked me to design a spot for the Lottery, I wouldn’t have come up with this. Even if they had said they wanted it to feature a guy running around town with a bag full of smiles, giving them out, I don’t believe I would have come up with this.

The spot’s charm comes in no small part from the brilliant director Marc Craste’s head. He’s the genius behind such great animations as Pica Towers and Jojo in the Stars, not to mention gobs of great adverts for StudioAKA. The point is, he’s not afraid to give a project much much more than is required. It’s why his designs and spots are so unusual. He’s freed himself from the chains of conventional thinking.

For instance, if you asked me for a guy running around town with a bag of smiles, I would probably have come up with a burlap bank sack with a smile stenciled on the outside where you would normally have a dollar sign in a cartoon. Very conventional. And probably no matter how well executed, ultimately forgettable. But Marc doesn’t make it a burlap sack. He makes it a doctor’s bag. Of course it’s a doctor’s bag, because this guy is running around town healing people – literally putting smiles on their faces! And that’s just the bag. Marc Craste and his team put the same ultra-creative process into the whole spot.

I love everything about this, from the visual design to the quality of the lighting to the stylistic animation to the quick pacing to the atmosphere to the great piece of music they licensed (holy mackerel is THAT charming…). I think it shows how much you can do with a simple idea. StudioAKA took this idea and just ran with it, and you can see the energy and joy they put into the spot. It paid off in a commercial that transcends its own medium. It comes off as more than an advert; it’s an animated short in its own right. We all should be so creative.