Airbnb

2021

CLIENT: (coming to us the week before Thanksgiving) Hi. Can you design and execute a beautifully rendered, graphic novel-esque, cel animated, short film about the history of our company and deliver it before Christmas? US: (casually filing nails and chewing on a long blade of grass) Is that it?

Airbnb was going public and they wanted a film to commemorate the event — a tribute to their humble origins in a small San Francisco apartment.

This film wasn’t trying to mythologize their founding but rather depict how it all went down in a cool, animated, modern graphic-novel style.

The only problem was they wanted it in five weeks. (gulp)
A near-impossible timeline, but never fear — BUCK is always up for a challenge.

Airbnb provided style references that they liked so it was a matter of finding the best and most efficient way to capture that look. But executing cel animation within that tight schedule took some ‘necessity is the mother of invention’-type ingenuity.

After some experimentation, we achieved this striking visual execution by doing the whole spot in 3D previz first and then having cel animators work off that along with some EbSynth thrown into the special sauce. The mixture of techniques combined to create something special. Socks were knocked.

Piece of cake.

In addition to the animated origin story, BUCK was also charged with 87 graphic deliverables ranging from lower thirds to full frame infographics.

Credits

BUCK

Executive Creative Director

Kevin Walker

Executive Producer

Nick Carmen

Group Creative Director

Jenny Ko

Creative Direction European Team

Vincent Lammers

Producer

Kirsten Collabolletta

Production Coordinator

Lara Arikan

Art Director

Ana Cezeta

Dae-Han Yi

Debora Cruchon

Hiroshi Endo

Head of 2D Animation

Daniel Coutinho

Head of Design

Brian Won

Head of CG Animation

Alessandro Ceglia

Head of Post Production

Paal Rui

CG Supervisor

Alex Dingfelder

Rigging Supervisor

Ernesto Ruiz Velasco

Composite Lead

Esteban Esquivo

Joe Brooks

Moses Journey

Cel Anim Lead

Junyi Xiao

CG Lead

Joshua Studebaker

3D Animation Lead

Tyler Lancaster

Storyboard

Eddie Lin

Tristyn Pease

Design

Arron Ingold

Artur Sadlos

Brandon Liu

Chelsea Lee

Chris Consani

Guy Shield

Hugh Keenan

Jigyu Yoon

Jong Lee

Marcus Collins

Morgan Schweitzer

Rasmus Bak

Rich Kelly

Soon Joo

Vincent Tsui

Modeling

Alfonso Petersen

Elias Glasch

Ivan Sokol

Jordan Levitt

Kintan Chauhan

Ryan Taylor

Rigging

Jing Huang

Jordan Levitt

Lighting

Yang Liu

Previs/ 3D Animation

Abby Boyce

Anaël Sain-Jean-Vidal

Christopher Meek

Eric Wang

Hillary McCarthy

Josh Baum

Ozan Basaldi

Sam Ortiz

Compositing

Adrian Moran

Andrew Tan

Ben Vinkenburg

Dries Von Broeck

Jeremie Carreon

Min Kim

Pedro Allevato

Preston Brown

Rasmus Bak

Richard Payne

Tim Weiser

Cel Animation

Adam Henderson

Alexander Bernas

Christian Villacanas

Christine Le

Daniel Katz

Griffin Giersch

Jake Armstrong

Junyi Xiao

Lennon Valinhas

Lumi Chang

Matthias Cuciniello

Ryoko Kondo

Sam Scopelitti

Song E Kim

Stephen Loveluck

Taik Lee

Thijs Viegers

Thomas Smolenksi

Timo Prousalis

Editor

Billy Kostka

Colorist

Marc Steinberg

Associate Creative Director

Vincent Lammers