MPC brings back Coca-Cola's Clay Dolls for Chinese New Year

The Coca-Cola Chinese New Year (CNY) mascot twins are back again this year, spreading the message that prosperity starts with family love. McCann Shanghai teamed up with MPC once again to bring the playful clay dolls to life in the fun film directed by The Loft Films’ Pepe Puenzo.

MPC’s Shanghai studio has worked on the CNY films for the past few years after originally designing and building the clay dolls in 2015 – and the team integrated them into this year’s festive campaign once again.

The VFX team, which was led by Creative Director Barry Greaves, animated the clay dolls and integrated them into the spot. In order to make the integration seamless, it was important that MPC was involved from the very beginning of the process, explained Barry: “We needed both the creatives and the client to agree the size of the clay dolls during the pre-vis stage in order to shoot properly framed plates,” adding, “we also needed to ensure that the plates that were shot of the Coca-Cola bottle interacted seamlessly with the animated dolls.”

The film was graded by MPC’s colourist Nikola Stefanovic, who enhanced the rich and vibrant colour palette to bring out the Chinese New Year theme and the brand’s iconic red.

MPC Managing Director Lily Li commented on the ongoing partnership with the brand: “We’ve been working on these CNY projects with Coca-Cola for the past few years, and it’s always exciting and fun for the team to do these playful and creative character animations. I think we all fall in love with AFU and AJIAO!”