Thorne Healthy Aging
2022
Through a novel combination of painting, live-action, and 3D, we told told a poetic story about healthy aging for Thorne.
Visual Poetry
Steering away from traditional supplement commercials’ obsession with “anti-aging,” we focused instead on an aspirational view of healthy aging that delivers a holistic lifestyle, rather than a cure.
Playing with scale and surrealism, we created a set of sublime environments for real people to inhabit as we told our story. The painterly textures and serene natural landscapes feel like a natural extension of the visual language that had been explored in our previous work for Thorne.
3D as a Means to an End
The paintings themselves set the tone for each of the scenes, meaning the 3D elements needed to feel integrated and embedded with each landscape. Matching lighting between the painted world and our 3D objects helped to unify each environment. As well as modeling the products, we also used 3D to bring depth to landscape elements in scenes with dynamic cameras, adding parallax and a sense of depth where it was needed.
For non-product elements, like the blossoming flower, we used painted textures to break up some of the precision.

The Product as Support
Product moments were designed to feel like animated still-lifes: quiet and reflective moments, playing with the idea of passing time.
Discovery: Where we started
Our starting point was loose painting exploration —playing with ways to integrate humans and objects in natural landscapes in a way that pushed scale, lighting and saturation.
We took inspiration from Surrealist masters like Magritte & Dali, as well as Romanticists like Caspar David Friedrich, where landscapes tell as much of a story as the people and objects within them.
Cutting together footage of the natural world showed us locations for exploration and started to give us a sense of pacing and camera movement.
We also used some cutting edge machine learning (EBSynth) to apply our painted style to some complex elements, like clouds and water.








Live Action
Much like with the 3D, we wanted the live-action talent to feel natural within their painted environments while still feeling intentionally “real.” We kept brush strokes and texture on elements of the environment and instead unified people and background through light and color.
Our shoot involved live-keying actors on top of paintings so that lighting could be angled and adjusted in real-time.
The cast reflected different moments during the journey of growing older—different ages, body shapes and genders.

A Story Built for Social
As well as a standard widescreen format, we knew we would also need to deliver square and portrait aspect ratios.
We designed with this in mind, making sure that compositions could be cropped in multiple ways, and could accommodate typography as needed.





BUCK
Executive Creative Director
Ben Langsfeld
Executive Producer
Joe Nash
Creative Director
Doug Hindson
Liron Eldar-Ashkenazi
Sr. Producer
Jess Pierik
Production Coordinator
Jennifer Blackwell
Victoria Sigel
Global Head of Creative Leadership
Orion Tait
Ryan Honey
NY Head of Creative Leadership
Steve Day
NY Head of Production
Kevin Hall
NY Head of Design
Joe Donaldson
NY Head of 2D Animation
Chad Colby
NY Head of 3D
Bill Dorais
NY Head of Post Production
Jose Fuentes
Post Production Supervisor
Jose Fuentes
Head of Strategy
Marla Moore
Brand Strategist
Asia Hunt
2D Animation Lead
David Hobizal
Gilles Desmadrille
CG Lead
Chris Ribar
Copywriter
Logan O'Brien
Concept Art & Matte Painting
Doug Hindson
Fernando Utreras
Wesley McClain
Technical Director
Jose Fuentes
R&D
John Karian
Joy Tien
Modeling
Daniela Portilla
Filipe Machado
Lighting
Chris Ribar
Shane O'Hara
Compositing
Lurival Jones
Navid Bagherzadeh
Previs
John Karian
3D Animation
Chris Ribar
John Karian
Houdini
Chris Ribar
2D Animation
Federico Saenz Recio
Po-Chen Chia
Editor
Cameron Kelly
Assistant Editor
Audrey McHale
Talia Mazzarella
Color Grade
Jose Fuentes
Head of Production - Live Action
Trish Rigby
Live Action Director
Doug Hindson
Liron Eldar-Ashkenazi
VFX Supervisor
Chris Ribar
Line Producer
Brian Bennhoff
DP
Derek McKane
Production Designer
Wayne Neho
Wardrobe Stylist
Bree Perry
Hair & Makeup
Jamie Bednarchick
1st AD
Marco Ajello
Script Supervisor
Jennifer Blackwell
3D Design Director
Chris Phillips
Sound
Music, Sound Design, VO & Mix
Antfood
Executive Creative Director
Wilson Brown
Executive Producer
Sue Lee
Composer/Sound Designer/Mix Engineer
Spencer Casey
Senior Producer
Jennifer Fife
Production Coordinator
Charlie Blasberg