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Building a recognisable character world for Kruidvat

For Kruidvat’s latest campaign, Ambassadors helped develop and animate a new character world for the brand. The film introduces a lively cast of CG characters designed to bring more recognisability, energy, and consistency to the campaign.

The brief was not simply to add animation, but to create characters that could carry the tone of the film and feel at home in Kruidvat’s visual world. They needed to feel expressive and full of life, while staying simple, direct, and immediately recognisable. Because the campaign runs across both the Netherlands and Belgium, the film was produced in three language versions: Dutch, French and Flemish.

Kruidvat Belgium: J'prends J'prends J'prends

Defining the look and movement

A large part of the work focused on shaping how the characters should look and behave on screen. Since the design language was intentionally minimal, smaller decisions had a bigger impact. A lot of time went into the facial expressions, material, shading, and movement to find the right balance.

The creative direction was clear that the characters should not feel overly cute or polished. Instead, they needed to feel tactile, energetic, and slightly understated. A realistic rubber-like texture helped give them weight and presence while keeping them grounded in the world of the commercial.

Animation and CG work

The production became fairly animation-heavy, with many characters appearing together in the same scenes. Their movement had to be carefully choreographed so that the interaction between them felt natural and precise.

One of the more complex sequences involved the characters passing ribbons between each other, which required close timing between the character animation and the ribbon dynamics.

The characters and ribbons were fully built and animated in CG, with additional effects used to place them naturally into the live-action environments. The team often started with looping movements, then adapted and expanded them depending on the needs of each shot.

Result

The final Kruidvat campaign introduces a distinct and character-led visual identity, using animation to create a recognisable world that works consistently across different markets.

Discover more of our animation work here.