To help the marketing and promotion of the Universal Pictures Home Entertainment release Minions: The Rise of Gru we were asked to create added value content that could be included across all platforms and shared on social media. Using the themes of the film, we created an animated piece that humorously highlighted the Chinese Zodiac qualities of each of the four main Minions.
The Chinese Zodiac is a major theme of the movie, and it was a simple decision to create a piece that highlighted the personalities of each of the four main Minions aligned with the Zodiac personality types. We spent some time crafting a script that humorously played on each of the Minion’s actions and behaviors in the film. We then storyboarded the custom graphics, built out a style guide and color palette that played into traditional Chinese themes and animated the graphics to create an elegant experience. The graphics were then supplemented with an action edit that played up the script. One of the challenges we encountered was trying to ascertain what Zodiac animal should represent each Minion, but after many years of working on Despicable Me and Minion movies, we felt a familiarity with each character that allowed us to confidently decide who should be which animal. This piece was a fun and informative experience that allowed us to create something unique and entertaining for a wide audience of Minion fans.
We received high praise from the client and the piece was subsequently localized to allow it to be seen by various territories outside the English speaking world.
