Halo Pictures develops Line's x8 Interactive Animated Films for JWT

The Line’s x8 interactive animated films form part of a larger online web presence around teenage bullying funded by the Australian Federal Government. Agency JWT Sydney approached Halo Pictures to create x8 interactive animated films using a single line, and develop 8 different styles to execute the campaign. The interactive animation shorts are available here.

Lisa Hauge, Halo Producer says, ‘The creative brief given to us was fantastic. Laurie Geddes and Micheal Malherbe from JWT were clear that we had to story tell through a single animating line and creatively not to borrow from obvious and cliché styles but to create them. From here Halo chose a selection of Art Express students, who worked alongside Halo’s Art Director Dave Shooter for the end results. The campaign allowed Halo to bring all areas of our expertise to the project in design, character animation and storytelling techniques. Each film had a separate pipeline for 2D and 3D animation, traditional and digital painting with experienced and emerging creative team members”.

JWT spokesperson shared, “Halo were brilliant to work with and brought a lot of fresh ideas to the table about different illustration styles, textures and background treatments. In fact, they came up with so many different ways of doing continuous line animation, we were spoiled for choice. There were some really cool ideas that didn't make the final cut”.

The animated stories are episodic and loosely follow the lives of a group of teenage friends as they move in and out of relationships. Each one deals with a different relationship dilemma and allows the viewer to make a range of choices. The aim is to get young people thinking about the issues and exploring the potential outcomes, rather than passing judgment or dictating behaviour.

The films created by Halo Pictures are all based on an animating “continuous line”, where the storytelling is literally drawn scene to scene between each interactive element. Each film has its own distinctive visual style, thanks to a group of up-and-coming young artists who were recruited mostly from ART EXPRESS by Halo to give an original look. Halo Pictures character animators and technical crew then translated each style to be suitable for interactive storytelling.

The aim with this style was to avoid the potentially polarizing nature of live talent, as well as giving the campaign an ownable look that’s not just a blatant rip-off of youth culture.