Adolescent’s LEGO Billboard in Times Square Is 3-D Mayhem
A subway ride in New York City can usually be described as anything but calm. Add in some zany LEGO characters and the backdrop of Times Square – a.k.a. ‘the crossroads of the world’ – and you’ve set the stage for a short bit of animated mayhem from the design and animation studio Adolescent. The New York-based studio, led by Partners and Creative Directors Man-Wai Cheung and Mina Muto, recently took characters from the LEGO universe and playfully inserted them into a subway-set bit of shenanigans that ends up reaching out to viewers and playfully drawing them in – no easy task in as sedate a setting as Times Square.
This isn’t Adolescent’s first trip down Broadway, either. Their portfolio of anamorphic videos includes OOH executions for everything from Visit Orlando and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to Nissin, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Bloomingdale’s. Their OOH work has appeared in other cities besides New York, too.
The Howler turned to Man-Wai and Mina to get a little inside info on how this project came about. Here’s what they had to say.
So was this your first work for LEGO? If so, how did this project come about?
Man-Wei: This was our first work for LEGO, and we were all very excited about it! Our great agency partners from Rapport WW’s Impact X global team came to us to help them make the Times Square activation for LEGO’s “Play is Your Superpower” campaign a standout piece with a 3D anamorphic board across from an installation they were doing.
Was this Adolescent’s first time doing a 3-D out of home execution such as this?
Mina: No, we’ve done many 3-D OOH executions at this point. You can take a tour of our work here.
This appears on an LED installation that wraps around the corner of a building. What challenge did that present in terms of designing the animation seen on the board?
Man-Wai: Crafting an animation on a screen that’s curved can be challenging, but for us, it’s half the fun. We scoped around the area for the ideal vantage point from which to view the board – it’s where the board kind of curves into the street – and we built the animation on that angle. From there we played with the depth of the board and created a little LEGO world inside to maximize the real estate of the board with the mini figures and LEGO objects.
All of these anamorphic projects appear without sound – no music, no SFX, no voiceover. How does that influence your design approach?
Mina: We knew without sound or dialogue that we had to really sell the story visually. And we also took advantage of the Times Square noise. The hustle and bustle of NYC really added to the animation naturally.
Man-Wai: And as big fans of slapstick comedies, the work of Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton inspired some exaggerated action and attention-grabbing character moments for this narrative.
Indeed, the characters seen in the board came from the “Play is Your Superpower” short film that’s part of the LEGO brand positioning and which is featured on their homepage. (You can view it here.) What was the biggest challenge here putting these pre-existing characters into a NYC-themed environment?
Mina: The “Play is Your Superpower” campaign film and site helped us a lot, as we were briefed to create a unique take on it, but set in the Times Square environment and designed to take advantage of that unique location to connect with pedestrians.
Man-Wai: And as New Yorkers ourselves, we loved getting to imagine the world that the “Play is Your Superpower” kids would interact with. It was an amazing experience to craft objects that we see as New Yorkers every day, like street signs, the subway, and souvenirs, and extend them into the LEGO world we created on the board. We paid meticulous attention to detail to the New York City elements and the details of the characters, to get everything accurate to both worlds.
How long did the project take to complete? How much actual playing with LEGO blocks went into your design and concepting phase? And did you get to keep the LEGO blocks after the project was done?
Mina: The anamorphic projects usually take between six and eight weeks to complete but we managed to complete this one from concept to completion in four weeks. We all are big LEGO fans and have LEGOs at work and at home. Having them around the studio helped to understand the tactility of the brick and minifigs and how they translate from 1.6 inches into 40-foot bricks that were running, flying and bumping into each other.
Man-Wai: And here some fun facts. Our whole Times Square LEGO billboard can be recreated with real LEGO bricks- we were using real product references and dimensions to create the board. The number 1932 that appears on the side of the subway train, that was the year LEGO was founded. And there are over 525 separate expressions on the LEGO female minifigure heads.
“Play is Your Superpower” 3D OOH Credits
Client: LEGO
Agency Rapport WW / Impact X
Creative Directors: Manwai Cheung and Mina Muto
Executive Producer: Turner Poth
Associate Producer: Catherine Sillars
Art Director: Akira Terabe
3D Designer: Pei Hsuan Wu
3D Animator: I-Ting Kao
Character Animator: Han Hu
