Hill Holliday / Ad Council / American Lung Association
American Lung Association A Hope Story
3D AnimationAI AssistedPainterlyThe Gail Awards Silver ’23
Hill Holliday / Ad Council / American Lung Association
Overview
A striking PSA for the American Lung Association, raising awareness of the importance of cancer screening, especially among ex-smokers. A young woman faces something larger than herself, rendered with a visual style based on 3D CG with a 2D-like finish, suggesting a mixed-media hand-painted feel. Emotional, bold, and exactly the kind of healthcare storytelling that breaks through the category’s visual conventions.
How it was made
The look had to feel hand-painted: 3D CG with a 2D finish, characters modelled in CG then painted with a brush-stroke effect, composited over 2D matte paintings in the same style.
Painting every frame by hand would have taken a schedule and a budget the film did not have, and the flickering, alive quality of real brushwork is exactly what gets lost when you smooth it out. So LOBO painted a set of key frames by hand and used those to teach a model the treatment, which then carried it across the in-between frames of every shot.
This was 2022. Not a generative shortcut, and nothing invented by a prompt: every frame the model touched was built, lit and rendered by the studio first, and the painting it learned from was made by the artists whose names are below. AI bought the schedule. The craft stayed human.
Client
American Lung Association, with The Ad Council
Agency
Hill Holliday
Technique
3D CG, painted finish, AI-assisted in-betweens
Year
2022
Behind the work
Concept and colour came first, on paper and in paint. The tests below are the ones that decided the film: the brush treatment running on a moving character, and the 2D smoke that had to sit on top of it without breaking the illusion.
The treatment, tested on a moving character
The 2D smoke element, tested over the render
Finding her
Every face, painted
Smoke as a character
The garage, in sketch
The garage, painted
The bus stop
The marathon
The train
The cast, turned around
Her, in the round
Her, older
The doctor
The bench, painted and turning
The train window
Credits
Client
American Lung Association
With
The Ad Council
Agency
Hill Holliday
Production
LOBO
Directors
Altons: Felipe Machado and Tiago Marcondes
Mateus de Paula Santos
Executive Producer
Luis Ribeiro
Producer
Su Constantine
Head of Production
Clara Morelli
Head of Post Production
Marcelo Barbosa
Head of CG
Fabio Shigemura
Team Coordination
Rosangela Gomes
Bruna Boretto
Post-Production Supervision
Leandro Pena
Post-Production Producer
André Carvalho
Storyboard
Érica Nagai
Concept
Rômulo de Oliveira
Gabriel dos Anjos
Wilson Panassi
Samara Saráty
Yara Rocha
Alexey
Fabio Miraglia
Guilherme Lascasas
Giovani Kosoki
Daniel Zeppo
Color Key
Pedro Minho
Animatic Editor
Érica Nagai
CG Coordination
Cristiane Santos
CG Supervisor
Marcos Samia
Modeling Lead
Tiago Mesquita
Modeling
Guto Spósito
Marcos Smirkof
Maurício Machado
Natan Zuanacci
Natan Ernani
Fernando Azulini
LookDev
Ricardo Riamonde
Renan Takeshita
Rigging Lead
Rafael Dias Joy
Rigging
Rafael Shiva
Murillo Barbelli
Felipe Gimenes
James Carmo
Animation Lead
Michael Maron
Animation
Larissa Paz
Camila Silva
Ronaldo Brito
André Lorenzini
Leo Zitto
Karina Chung
Nicolas Taro
Fabio Pugliesi
Felipe Simões
Mendel Reis
2D VFX
Genoviz Pagani
Fernando Rangel
Robson Vilalba
Gabriel Bitar
Lighting & Render
Thiago Peretto
Color Grading
Letícia Blanco
Composition
Leandro Pena
Rotoscoping
Gassan Abdouni
More work
