CASE STUDY — Revolution brewing

CREATIVE CONCEPT — CUSTOM PROP + SET CURATION — FULL STORYBOARDS — STOP-MOTION ANIMATION — SOUND DESIGN — VIDEO EDITING

What does stop-motion give us? 

Well, for one, stop-motion animation transports viewers. Using the tabletop space, custom set curation, and a knowledgeable, dedicated crew, stop-motion animation provides characters, worlds, and full narratives using ordinary tools and props to develop full story arcs outside of what you’d be able to get with traditional video work. Stop-motion is technically impressive, visually distinct, and provides a sense of curiosity and play as a stand-alone video medium. 

With this case study, we want to break down our history of making creative content to promote Revolution Brewing’s League of Heroes IPA Variety pack by zooming in on one issue of the  series. Issue 15 featured Game of Thrones-style “Hop Hero” characters to represent each type of beer, which was the inspiration for the entire project.

Feelin’ intrigued? Before getting into the nitty-gritty of how we developed and created this epic story, we have to take it back a little bit. Let’s show you how we got here.

Back in 2017, Revolution tapped Potluck during the start of their LoH Issue releases, where they came to our team with some working ideas for marketing videos. We first created singular live-action videos that were used as promotional material, which you can check out below.

Entertaining? Creative? Of course! But, the singular live-action videos limited the Issues’ promotional period. So, now what? Our team thought through how to stretch Revolution’s promotion of each Issue while still keeping content unique and engaging. The solution became clear: stop-motion animation.

We pitched Revolution on switching up mediums. Not only would stop-motion fit into our existing budget, but our team could get really ambitious with our set and character design for these videos. We developed a creative approach where our team would make social teasers that featured one IPA beer at a time in a LoH variety pack. These short teasers would be promoted on socials for longer periods to generate hype for the life of the issue, which usually ran around three months.

The series began picking up attention from Revolution’s social media followers and prospective consumers alike, which launched some internal rebranding for the LoH Issues. Each Issue would now contain themed characters and packaging! Instead of developing creative around each individual can, our team could now build out entire visual worlds for new Issues. With this, we could design stories where all featured IPA characters could interact with each other!

To get our production started for the fifteenth Issue, we designed mood boards and storyboards to easily share our concept with Revolution. These mood boards ensured Revolution and our crew were aligned on story before moving into shoot days. We wanted the high production value often attributed to Game of Thrones to inform how we approached this Issue. With boards finalized, our team had to determine the most efficient method to shoot through our big concepts without compromising the creative intent or integrity of the project. To make our creative vision come to life, we brought on fabrication partner, Stolatis. And, with our team and story secured, we began our production!

For Potluck, we discern creative decisions based on the complexity of concept, and then trim or beef up production where necessary. For this project, our crew aimed to film in three days, including a pre-light. The Stolatis team developed modular sets to help inform creative decisions, and the modularity of each set allowed us the ability to change prop items in and out quickly, so we could execute a number of different scenes in our schedule.

The final stop-motion piece reflects the character-building structure akin to Revolution’s League of Heroes mythos. Playing in the stop-motion framework allowed our team to develop fun, stylized videos that directly align with Revolution’s branding. We’re lucky to have a partner that support us enough to really dive into stop-motion for their promotional efforts. Stop-motion does have the ability to create larger-than-life, fantastical narratives without large commercial influence, big sets, or big budgets. It does require a talented crew and loads of creativity, which is why we love doing it! You can check out our other League of Heroes videos and additional work we’ve done for Revolution here.

CONCEPT — DAVID WALL + MIKEY LITCHFIELD
DIRECTOR + LEAD ANIMATOR — DAVID WALL 
LIGHTING + SUPPORT ANIMATION — MIKEY LITCHFIELD
SET DESIGN — STOLATIS FABRICATION (EVANGELOS STOLATIS, ANDREA JABLONSKI, EMMA BILYEU)
EDIT + SOUND DESIGN — DAVID WALL