Gogo-No-Kocha delivers some Happiness

In this spot for Japanese brand Gogo-No-Kocha, Hornet Director Yves Geleyn pulls out a few of his most iconic stops: vivid animation, fairytale sensibilities, and a simple yet sweet story about a young girl striving to carry on her family's legacy.

The English Translation of the ad is as follows: "I was born and raised on a tea farm in Sri Lanka. My father once told me: 'From the soil of this small island, I want to produce the world's most sought after, high-quality tea.'

The spirit of my father's legacy is what I want to carry on. My tea leaves this year will become Gogo-No-Kocha.

Since 2013, Gogo-No-Kocha has been supporting Sri Lankan tea farms through the help of the Rainforest Alliance."

Partnering with Australian-based production company Unlisted and AOI Pro, Asia’s leading creative production company, this is the first time Gogo-No-Kocha has produced an original animation in collaboration with an American animation company and one of Hornet’s first forays into the Japanese market.

Kirin Tea – Happiness

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Agency AOI Pro/Tokyo
Production Company Hornet
Director Yves Geleyn

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Credits

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Agency AOI Pro/Tokyo
Production Company Hornet
Director Yves Geleyn
Ad Agency Hakuhodo Inc/Tokyo
Production Company Unlisted
Animation Hornet
Executive Producer/Managing Director Hana Shimizu
Head of Production Karen Lawler

Director of Development Kristin Labriola
Associate Producer Nico Benenati
Senior Editor Anita Chao
Editor Sam Stulin
Executive Producer Graham Pryor
Sound Antfood/USA
Executive Creative Director/Founder Wilson Brown
Executive Producer Sue Lee

Producer Katherine Hom
Audio Post/Sound Designer Yuta Endo
Head of Production Steven Bradshaw
Producer Megan Plane
Copywriter Kenji Saito
Creative Director Yasutaka Ide
Creative Director Shin Nagashima
Producer Shu Nagasawa

Producer Masahiro Kawaguchi

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With intricately thoughtful character design, gloriously lush backgrounds, and a nostalgically classic animation style, Yves delivers a spot that is everyone’s cup of tea.

One of the more interesting creative challenges was ensuring the animation style stayed true to the local environment in every way. From background landscapes, to intricate character details and colours, everything needed to feel authentically Sri Lankan. Geleyn and his team, including Lead Animator Sami Healy (who Geleyn singled out for her invaluable contributions) responded with a beautifully rich 2D film full of heavily considered lighting, shapes, shades, and colours, and a distinctly European-meets-Japanese animation style infused throughout.

According to Geleyn, this campaign had everything. “It was a dream project in terms of creating a more classical animation style; having a worldwide animation team delivering across time zones, from South Korea and Canada, to France and New York; and having respectful clients who really loved the art and got excited about seeing what we were producing. Everything was really fun and there was a lot of positive energy in it.”