SK-II
THE ART OF TRAVEL
We were approached this summer by Sapient Nitro Shanghai to create a set of six animations for SKII’s Art of travel campaign based off of Japanese artist Yuko Shimizu’s original artwork. 
Our task was to design a story for each of the six city-themed boxes, bringing life to each illustration’s intricate oriental flavours in very different ways. The challenge lay in visualising and reproducing Yuko’s elegant brush strokes while telling the stories in a three-dimensional space.
The dynamic line work could only be properly animated by cel-animation, but our 3D team provided vital previz which worked as a vital backbone for the final camera moves and character animation. In terms of the character animation, the most challenging aspect was animating the girls’ hair. The painstaking hair animation were completely done frame by frame.
Credits
Original illustrations
Yuko Shimizu 
Animation Director
Yibi Hu, Mike Tylor
Additional Artwork
Rafaila Raikova 
Line Producer
Naima Vogt
Storyboarding
Alex Potts
2D Animation
Setareh Seto
Alex Potts
Maki Yoshikura
Inbal Breda
Leonard Bismuth
Yino Huan
3D Modeling & Animation
Rafael Jiminez
Kevin O’Shea
Clean Up & Colour
Rafaila Raikova
Jennifer Belobi
Setareh Seto
Compositing
Mike Tyler
Music & Sound Design
Bill Cargill