The campaign was aired in the UK to coincide with ‘Panto Season’ – a part of the year when traditional fairy tales are performed in theatres in ‘pantomimes’. They’re typically overblown, colourful, flamboyant versions of well-known stories that often play with storylines and structure – which is why we’ve taken the same approach in our ads.

The campaign was created to promote the reverse camera in the Vauxhall Astra Ultimate. To do that in an unexpected way, we took globally-recognised stories and told them backwards – to show that when things happen in reverse (like when you reverse a car), they don’t always end happily. Each story was told by a different animation company, giving the campaign a deliberately broad and varied visual style – all tied together by the same core idea.

Digital illustration was a key component of each film – forming the foundation for the animation in each one. Each character and every environment went through several stages of illustrative experimentation using a range of digital tools, from Illustrator to ZBrush. Styles were chosen to be likeable and engaging, to match Vauxhall’s brand values of providing affordable cars anyone can enjoy. Characters were also developed to reflect their journey through each story, evolving in a way that communicated the core idea – that a backwards journey can be a bad one! Once an overall visual style was defined, the process was a simple one: we crafted each illustration by hand, sometimes frame-by-frame, with particular attention paid to the quality of expressions and movement – as well as textures. For instance, elements such as skin, fabric, feathers, clouds, vegetation and landscapes were all crafted from scratch for each film. The overall aim for the illustration was to create a separate and complete world for each part of the campaign, while always working to communicate the campaign’s bigger idea. Overall, the project involved teams from the UK, Spain and Brazil and took more than 5,000 hours of work to complete.