Brawl Stars Happy Brawlidays
2021
Brawl Stars wanted a holiday film — something that echoed the cherished holiday specials of yore but with a devilish, sharp-elbowed, Brawler twist. We delivered this lil tussle to them in the St. Nick of time and it’s racked up over ten million views on Youtube already. Ho ho ho.
Brawl Stars is a vibrant community full of myth building, beloved characters, and, of course, wicked fun gameplay. The idea was to corral all of it — the action, the irreverence, the weirdness, and the chaos into one, tightly-wrapped, heart-warming holiday gift for the fans.
From the initial brief, we had a few potential scripts we were working on, but we had some areas we knew we wanted to focus on — merging the kind of saccharine sweet holiday tones with Brawl Stars non-consequential violence.
BUCK and Brawl Stars developer Supercell hit on the same concept for the film: A holiday window display brought to life through intricate automata. But this is Starr Park, so there’s always a twist.
In order to develop the look of the characters and sets, we absorbed a ton of reference: everything from Rankin Bass holiday classics to model train sets to Disney imagineering and more. The goal with the CG animation was to make it feel believable. We wanted all of the motions and movements of our CG characters to be physically achievable with pretty advanced animatronics.
So pulling from high-end vinyl figures for character design, we worked out how these figures would be built in real life — their scale, their movement, their placement within a set.
It was important that this miniature world was realistic and authentic. Our designers took care to look at materials and mechanisms which were true to scale and capability.
Supercell was an exceptional partner. Taking this new approach to their visuals really meant having a lot of trust in us, and we wanted to make sure we were staying true to their nuanced and detailed world. We even peppered in some Easter (er, Christmas?) eggs that would resonate with super fans.
Interpreting these designs into CG meant also staying true to Brawl Stars established design language, but keeping the handcrafted, tactile feel which makes miniature worlds like this so appealing.
Because the music was so integral to the piece, we had a constant back and forth between our animation team, our editors, and our music partners at Butter. It seems simple, but this back and forth can create a huge bottleneck. By aligning on an approach in the beginning, we could make it work between our in house editor, our animators, and our sound partner.
This piece was great fun to work on and very rewarding. The day it was released into the wild it started racking up views on Youtube (coming up on 12 million!) We’re very happy it was received so warmly by the beautiful and twisted people that make up the Brawl Stars community. Happy Holidays and Viva la Royale!
BUCK
Group Creative Director
Joe Mullen
Creative Director
Dan Marsh
Global Executive Producer
Nick Carmen
Executive Producer
Kirsten Collabolletta
Luisa Murray
Producer
Adriane Scott-Kemp
Alex DeSanto
Mackenzie Alexander
Production Coordinator
Flo Fusco
Global Head of Design
Brian Won
Head of Design - LA
Steve Day
Art Director
Sol Lee
Concept Artists
Dan Muangprasert
Dia Jamandron
Fekim Lee
Genice Chan
Karen Lam
Rafael Lopez
Stan Chan
Tuo Kan
Vanessa Cheung
Vicki Liu
Zack Williams
Zhen Liu
Type Designers
Ana Gomez Bernaus
Augstina Ferrario
Storyboard Artists
Cristopher Schenck
Mickey Quinn
Tristyn Pease
William Rosado
Global Head of 2D Animation
Daniel Coutinho
Head of 2D - LA
Peter Kallstrom
2D Animation Lead
Abigail Bosworth
Drew Wiebe
Lumi Chang
Nick Knezvich
Global Head of 3D
Doug Wilkinson
Head of 3D - LA
Alex Dingfelder
3D Supervisors
Alex Dingfelder
Marc Steinberg
3D Lead
Wing Sze Lee
3D Animation Lead
Peter DeSalvo
Rigging Supervisor
Ernesto Ruiz Velasco
Rigging
Ernesto Ruiz Velasco
Hernan Ares
Jordan Levitt
Modeling
Alfonso Petersen
Ernesto Ruiz Velasco
Fernando Ruiz
Joshua Studebaker
Kien Hoang
Michele Herrera
Peter Sandeman
Rui Huang
Wing Sze Lee
Look Development
Alfonso Petersen
Felipe Ferreira
Joshua Studebaker
Kien Hoang
Michele Herrera
Peter Sandeman
Rui Huang
Wing Sze Lee
Lighting TD
Jens Lindgren
Lighting and Comp
Alfonso Petersen
Beatrice Viguier
Chloe Tu
Joshua Studebaker
Kien Hoang
Michele Herrera
Peter Sandeman
Rui Huang
Tina Chao
Wing Sze Lee
3D Animation
Cameron Hicks
Hillary McCarthy
Jeff Kim
John Fielding
Josh Baum
Laura Koval
Liana Krakirian
Mike Sime
FX Artists
Carlos Villanueva
Kevin Weber
Mahmoud Elragheb
Marc Steinberg
Global Head of Post Production
Paal Rui
Editor
Billy Kostka
Assistant Editor
Robert Bailey
