McDonald’s Herbst – Francesco Campobasso

MCDONALD'S HERBST

Client

Mc Donald’s

Director

Francesco Campobasso

Agency

Leo´s Thjnk Tank München

Producer

Ulrike Kramer

Production

INFECTED GmbH

We were asked to create 4 short animated stories for the Autumn promotion of McDonald's.

Herbst tells the story of Freddy, a hungry squirrel who is preparing for winter in Autumn and uses any meanings to try to get the McDonald's nuts. The only problem is that he doesn't seem to manage, no matter if he tries sneaking and hiding on the trees, diving from above or digging in the ground.

These had to be very short stories with a duration between 7 and 9 seconds plus some seconds for the packshots. In this very short amount of time, the difficulty was in creating a recognizable story and a charming character. The main focus on the character side was to show a cheeky personality but setting a clear distance with other similar characters like Scratch from Ice Age.

Even if we were influenced by Zootopia and their anthropomorphic animals, stylized designs to keep costs down plus a brighter and more colourful mood were key.

The production went on for around six weeks and I was also involved in other areas apart from directing such as lookdev, lighting and pipeline plus I also had the role of CG Supervisor during this production.