First Home

First Home service helps clients find the right home by including all of their must-haves and deal-breakers. The animation was meant to encourage first-home buyers in their thirties to participate in the program.

The video focuses on the young couple and the First Home guide who assists them through the process of buying a house. The guide helps the couple to avoid the dangers that are on the way and takes them on a surreal journey through time and space to present them their dream home.

The animation was meant to evoke the classy and elegant feeling of the service with a pinch of suspense. The style was inspired by the classic Noir films and spy craze of the 1960s. Our inspirations were also classic-era American film titles and poster designs from artists such as Saul Bass. A mixed-media approach based on photos and video resulted in the retro look.

We experimented with the characters’ anatomical proportions to achieve the surreal, but serious style. As a result, we got highly stylized and flexible characters, that could be easily rigged and animated in After Effects (with Rubber Hose’s Rubber Rig).

Facial expressions of the characters were an important part of the story. Photos were carefully chosen from stock videos to show all the emotions felt by the couple throughout the story and to allow for head rotations. We made over forty photos of custom hands so that characters could react to what’s happening with them and gesticulate throughout the video.

The genre-based video demanded the use of cinematic narration. To achieve it we played with smart transitions, cuts and a variety of compositions that enhanced the Kafkaesque feeling in the first part of the video.