Life doesn’t fit in a box. And neither should your car. This was the driving motivation behind one of Honda’s newest vehicles – the sleek and sporty Civic Coupe. We created an immersive world full of square people, square statues, square plants, and even square animals to contrast with the Coupe’s curvaceous forward-thinking design. The Civic Coupe cuts through this monotonous square world, offering the inhabitants an awe-inspiring glimpse into a different way of life. To amplify the square effect, we open the spot with a 4x4 aspect ratio – widening into full letterbox only after introducing the Civic Coupe. This spot not only puts this sporty new car into the spotlight; it also reinforces how Honda, as a brand, is a champion of bending rules.

We were tasked with extensive digital environment work replacing buildings and landscapes with a squarer aesthetic, along with populating the square city with its inhabitants. Square pigeons and a poodle were created entirely in CG, with designs concepted by our artists. The square people were a combination of practical effects, with our team recreating the faces in CG to bring them to life.  

We went onset to capture digital scans of the practical latex models, which were just static latex faces in a neutral pose. We needed to have pixel accurate scans so we could recreate them in CG and then bring them to life. During the entire process we met with the US agency remotely on a weekly basis from our studios in Australia, and using our online review tools, we went into some amazing creative detail to solve all of the challenges of the project.