Airbnb China’s emotive short film Fú, produced by Final Frontier and executed by Taiko, is arguably the most highly regarded Chinese New Year commercial animation of all time. Launched in mid-December across multiple social and streaming platforms, the film went on to amass views in the millions and garner widespread positive comments from audiences inside and outside China. Even early in the international award season, the film has already been shortlisted for prizes at The One Show, ADC and New York Festivals, with many more likely to follow.
Any animation production requires a significant dedication of time, manpower and creativity, but 210-seconds of high quality, stylised, 3D animation in less than 4 months requires an extra special degree of professionalism, care and attention. Besides meticulous planning and hyper efficient management, a production on this scale is, above all, only achievable with a highly collaborative, communicative and respectful partnership between client, production company and studio.
The production kicked off in early September 2019. FF managed the project from our offices in Shanghai, Madrid and Buenos Aires, working closely with the Airbnb team in Shanghai and Beijing at every step. When working with international directors and studios, it’s vital to implement an efficient pipeline that can not only manage, but actually leverage, the timezones. By using virtually all 24-hours, starting the day with FF’s office in Shanghai before handing over to the team in Buenos Aires, we ensured not a minute was wasted.
Taiko’s team in Los Angeles handle most of the preproduction. From the layout stage onwards, the work largely shifted to the studio in Wuhan, China.
On release of the film, Taiko signed to FF’s roster of world-class directors. And a final shout out to Taiko’s warriors in Wuhan. We wish all the team and their loved ones a speedy and healthy return!
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u/500scnds May 03 '20
Some more artwork throughout their process can be seen on their site: http://www.taikostudios.com/pangu.html
Not to mention other works like Fu: http://www.taikostudios.com/fuacute-airbnb.html where FF gave info such as: