Fazer Purkkalizer
January 19th, 2009

Fazer was launching a new product family of chewing gums. And not just any gums, they were the only gums with 100% Xylitol as a sweetener and their flavours were based on some classic Fazer candies. Director Kalle Kotila of Woodpecker Film contacted us to create a ten second film for each of the flavours: Salmiakki, Ässä Mix and Tyrkisk Peber Freeze. Basically the plan was to create one film that would then be modified for each of the flavours.

Mikko Vormala took up designing the Purkkalizer-machine. "First I started creating a more realistic Purkkalizer with influences from espresso machines and such.", says Mikko. "Kalle wanted to steer more towards cartoons and came up with a good basic sketch for the structure. I kept Kalle's main form as intact as possible while adding details from real-life appliances such as stereos, speakers, industrial indicators and basically anything that came to my attention at the studio." Once the machine blueprints had been laid out, Kalle designed the retro-nametags and signs to be attached to the sides.

The animation work was kicked off by making a 3D-animatic with Jani Karvonen animating the basic behaviour of the machine and Mika Rantala working on a rough cut of the film. "The very short ten second duration really posed a challenge all the way through,", says Mika Rantala. "A lot of fine tweaking with animation, camera angles and edits was done before we came up with a good structure for the film." The candies in the beginning are a simple physics simulation and everything else was animated in 3D by Jani. "I am very happy with the sharp and spiky animation Jani came up with.", says Mikko, who was supervising Jani's animation work.

Animation preview

Once the camera angles and animation were ready Rami Riihijärvi started working on the lighting and materials for the machine and the surroundings. Mika then rendered the scenes and composited, edited and colour graded the films to their final look.

Credits

Client: Fazer

Agency: Briiffi
Creatives: Joona Puurunen, Mikko Kalajoki
Project Manager: Mari Rajamäki

Production Company: Woodpecker
Producer: Hannu Kalliolahti
Director: Kalle Kotila
Sound design: Humina