RK Venture and Toronto-based animator Joren Cull use absurdist humor to make clear that driving under the influence is no laughing matter, in their deceptively silly animated campaign for NMDOT.
The New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT) recently collaborated with Albuquerque-based RK Venture and award-winning Toronto-based illustrator and animator Joren Cull to create a driver safety initiative, “Bad Driver's Club.”
After seeing Cull's A Brief History of Radiohead and other shorts on Pitchfork, The RK Venture creative team reached out to the animator. The result is “The Bad Driver's Club,” a colorful and deceptively silly animated campaign that uses absurdist humor to make clear that driving under the influence is no laughing matter and that risks behind the wheel aren't worth taking.
The PSAs were inspired by the 1980s movie The Breakfast Club, about a bunch of high school misfits sentenced to detention together due to bad behavior. Venture Broadcast creative director Nick Tauro clarified that, in this case, it’s a group of irresponsible drivers forced together in “The Bad Driver’s Club.”
“We envisioned an irreverent animated campaign that would give us room to play,” explained Tauro. “We struck gold when our lead designer, Becky Hahs, came across Joren Cull's perfectly oddball work.”
Tauro and Cull discussed the messages the animated short needed to deliver and how best to communicate them with humor without negating the serious issues at hand.
“I incorporated these points into the scripts I wrote and then made an animatic for each using a preliminary voice-over,” shared Cull. “Once all were happy with these, I rerecorded the voice-overs and illustrated them by hand on a tablet in Photoshop. Then, I animated the shorts using a combo of After Effects and cel animation.”
The shorts took about two months to create, from the initial consultation to final delivery, encompassing NMDOT and RK Venture approving scripts and animatics along the way.
“The team on this project was small but mighty, with five in total,” added Tauro. “After our initial brainstorming sessions with Joren about key messages, concepts, and character development, we gave him a bit of free rein to develop the storylines and illustrations. We trusted he was clear on what we were after and wanted to allow him to bring the full-on wackiness that he is known for, which attracted us to his work in the first place.”
Tauro added, “This was definitely the most irreverent animated campaign we've created for a client. And it is a tribute to NMDOT that they were open to the energetic, engaging, and undeniably unique approach to storytelling we pitched them. We collaborated with Joren because we wanted to produce a behavioral change campaign that was audacious and, as a result, memorable and effective. We couldn't be happier with the results and the public's response to the campaign.”
Check out Bad Driver's Club-Drugged Driving and Bad Driver’s Club-Just Drive:
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
