AOKIstudio's Blog

Successful Examples of 3D Animation in Advertising

3D animation, with its endless possibilities for creating 3D characters and 3D settings, offers new dimensions to the art of advertising. It opens an exciting path for brands, communication agencies, and audiovisual production companies, for limitless creative expression and exploration. Whether to captivate, inform, or inspire, 3D animation opens up new and stimulating horizons.
But what are the best examples of using 3D?
What are the advertisements that have truly resonated with viewers?

AOKIStudio presents examples of advertising films where the use of 3D is particularly fitting.
An invitation to discover the opportunities that 3D animation can present for your business!
The AOKIstudio Blog does not present films made by AOKIstudio.
The films presented in this blog were made by other 3D animation studios whose work we particularly appreciate for its originality and quality.

3D Animation

Masterpiece

Direction : Henry Scholfield, 2023
Client : Coca-Cola
Agency : Blitzworks
Production : Academy Films
Post-production : Electric Theatre Collective
Sound : Yessian Music
Masterpiece

2D and 3D characters in advertising

A journey through art history.

In a museum, masterpieces of art history and contemporary creations, paintings, photographs and sculptures come to life. The works of art pass a bottle of Coca-Cola from hand to hand in an attempt to wake up a student about to be spotted by his teacher.

The character in the painting "Divine Idyll" (Aket Kubic, 2022) extracts the Coca-Cola bottle from the painting "Large Coca-Cola" (Andy Warhol, 1962) to send it to a sailor in the painting "The Shipwreck" (William Turner, 1805), who in turn passes it to Emily in the photograph "Falling in library" (Vikram Kushwah, 2012). The bottle then lands in the hands of one of the characters in the painting "The blow dryer" (Fatma Ramadan, 2021) before continuing its journey in the famous painting "Scream" (Edvard Munch, 1895), followed by the painting "You Can't Curse Me" (Wonder Buhle Mbambo, 2022), the bedroom in Arles (Van Gogh, 1889), a sculpture by Auguste Rodin, a landscape by Stefania Tejada (2020) and a Utagawa Hiroshige bridge (1858). The "Girl with a Pearl" (Johannes Vermeer, 1665) will then gently place the bottle next to the sleeping student.
Discover the masterpieces highlighted in the film...

Advertising

Death to the Death Penalty

Direction: Pleix, 2010
Client: Amnesty International France
Agency: TBWA Paris
Production: Warm & Fuzzy
Post-production: Digital District Paris
Music: Carly Comando
Death to the Death Penalty

3D characters in advertising

A powerful statement against the death penalty.

Amnesty International, an international non-governmental organisation, promotes the defence of human rights and campaigns for the release of prisoners of conscience and the abolition of the death penalty.
The film shows various scenes of execution and the death penalty, with wax figures that melt and disappear.
The use of realistic 3D and special effects in the film serves as a wonderful metaphor for the abolition of the death penalty.
The use of transluminescence (Subsurface scattering) makes the wax very realistic.

Advertising

Testimony of a snail

Direction: Andy's, 2011
Client: Sequoia
Agency: Marcel
Production: Wizz Design
Post-production: Unit Image
Testimony of a snail

3D Animals in Advertising

A snail is going through an existential crisis.

Sequoia is a brand specialising in organic food and aims to help change consumer habits so that everyone can take responsibility for their own health and well-being through quality food.
In this advertising film, Sequoia depicts a snail questioning its sexual identity, communicating the idea that nature is authentic and that natural organic food is reliable and healthy. The advertising slogan is: Nature has nothing to hide.

What better way to express uncertainty about sexual identity than with a hermaphroditic animal like the snail? Snails do in fact have male and female reproductive organs, and they may still be in a state of flux!

Attributing human characters and feelings to the snail was necessary to move the spectator.
"Who am I? Am I a girl in a boy's body or a boy in a girl's body?"
The 3D modelling and animation of the snail made it possible to personify it, using its tentacles as its main means of expression. The photo-realistic 3D rendering reinforces this choice.
The use of transluminescence (Subsurface scattering) makes the snail's skin very realistic.
Discover the making-of of the Testimony of a snail advert...
Check out the Spontex ad featuring 3D hedgehogs in photo-realistic rendering...

Advertising

Canal kitchen

Direction: Antoine Bardou Jacquet, 2016
Client: Canal Plus
Agency: BETC
Production: Partizan
Post-production: Unit Image
Music: Vladimir Cosma
Maya

3D Characters and VFX in Advertising

The chefs in a gourmet restaurant cook with ingredients from the cinema! Chases and explosions!

Canal Plus is a French television channel that mainly offers cinema and sports programmes.
In this advertising film using 3D and special effects, a team of cooks passionately unpack, cut, grate, mix, cook and season dishes not made from food, but from cartoon characters, robots, police cars, footballers and explosives straight out of TV programmes.

Dynamic 3D animation and special effects are particularly well suited to representing the profusion of ingredients and the lively atmosphere of a large restaurant kitchen.
As with great cooking, for the best television you need the best ingredients!
Discover the making-of of the Canal kitchen advert...

Advertising

Maya

Direction: Frederic Planchon, 2016
Client: SSE
Agency: Adam & Eve DDB
Production: Academy
Post-production: The Mill
Music: Nat King Cole
Maya

3D characters in advertising

Maya the orang-utan is fascinated to discover electricity.

SSE (Scottish & Southern Energy) is a Scottish energy distribution company.
It's impossible to get a real orang-utan to film all these scenes!
The orang-utan is therefore entirely in 3D. Motion capture for movement and photorealistic rendering.
Discover the making-of of the Maya advert...

Advertising

T-shirts

Direction: Dougal Wilson, 2015
Client: Ikea
Agency: Mother
Production: Blink
Post-production: MPC London
T-shirts

3D objects in advertising

Migrating T-shirts.

How do you create expressions and feelings in Ikea T-shirts and make them fly like migratory birds?
The T-shirts have no faces or body parts like humans, and the 3D animators used the openings in the neck of the T-shirts as heads to create expressions and looks. On the ground, the sleeves simply hang down, but they turn into wings when the T-shirts take flight. The animation is created using a classic 3D skeleton and simulations to manage the interactions between the T-shirts and their environment (wind, hard and soft surfaces, etc.).
Discover the making-of of the Ikea T-shirts advert...

A great advertising film!
Perhaps a nod to the magnificent advert for Aqualtis by Dario Piana, Leo Burnett Milan in 2006, in which clothes come to life in a washing machine like fish in the ocean.

Advertising

Cogs

Direction: Laurent Witz, 2017
Client: AIME
Agency: M&C Saatchi, Sydney
Production: Zeilt Productions
Music: Olivier Defradat
Cogs

3D characters, sets and objects in advertising

The meeting of two characters whose lives seem predetermined by a mechanised system.

The film was made to mark the international launch of AIME, an Australian charity whose mission is to create a fairer world through equality in education.
The 3D animation conveys a powerful message that invites everyone to free themselves from prejudice and decide their own future.

Advertising

Date Night

Direction: Si & Ad, 2013
Client: TalkTalk
Agency: CHI & Partners, London
Production: Academy Films
Post Production & Visual Effects: Academy Films
Music : Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, Starship
Sound Design: Sam Ashwell, 750mph
Date Night

2D characters and 3D objects in advertising

The meeting between a spaceman, a wallpaper character, and a ballerina, a lampshade character.

The characters are animated in traditional 2D, then composited into a live-action film.
Beautiful 2D animation, with a particular emphasis on the characters' textures, which change according to the materials they encounter along the way, wallpaper, tiles, fabric or even woollen carpets.

The AOKIstudio blog, with a selection and examples of the best 3D advertising, explores how 3D animation has become part of the advertising landscape and how it enriches and elevates visual communication. It's also an invitation to think about and discover what 3D animation can do for your business.

Do you know of any other successful examples of 3D animation advertising?
Share your knowledge! We'll add them to our list of the best 3D ads!