Green Intentions

Since 1960, ASN Bank has been leading the charge in sustainability. Given current challenges like climate, energy, and nitrogen crises, we ask: What’s the role of a sustainable bank? This question drives ASN Bank’s brand strategy, shaping propositions, customer relations and innovation, leading to the introduction of the “Groene Bedoelingen ” campaign.

Selmore has harnessed this ambition to shape its creative work, seamlessly weaving together the guiding idea and ASN Bank’s renowned ‘mystical creatures’ concept. In the latest campaign, a new animal family takes the stage, and the well-known squirrel steps into a more prominent role. The script was developed and created by Selmore, with Ambassadors assuming full creative production responsibilities, marking a significant development in our long-standing creative partnership with ASN.

You probably know our previous ASN campaigns, Scapegoat or the Shady Bug. However, Groene Bedoelingen presented a fresh challenge: to bring the ASN forest into the metaverse. Why? Using natural materials the 3D forest offers unparalleled sustainability and flexibility.

We digitised the assets by a process called photogrammetry. This is done by taking dozens of real life pictures of the physical miniature objects like the trees, plants, wood etc. from different angles, scanning them and reconstructing them as CG 3D objects. This results in a fully customisable, season-shifting CG forest that maintains the miniature charm.

Not only did we create the whole ASN forest but also animated all new characters that will appear in future ASN commercials and took charge of the color grade. Our team put a lot of love into the details to make them truly unique, like the “hipster” goat that is drying its wool socks, or the bird with shoes that rather walks than flies, or the little snail that has a solar panel attached to its roof.

Nick, Animation Director adds to this: “We are even closer to the skin of the animals in the new films and have therefore paid a lot of attention to the natural materials of the characters. Instead of miniature sets, we have now built the entire forest in 3D where all the elements can also be used and reused separately. This ensures that our animations are also a lot more flexible and therefore more sustainable.”

Justin Blyth, Creative Director adds to this: “In order to create quick and effective social content using the complete CG characters and forest, we migrated our ASN forest and creatures into a realtime rendering pipeline. Operating our projects in this pipeline will allow us to make rapid animation adjustments and real-time rendering of animated scripts in our CG environments. Equally significant, this approach enhances sustainability, eliminating the need for on-site shoots and the creation of additional physical elements.”