For the latest installment of their long-running ‘Epic’ campaign, MoneySuperMarket brought to life Action Man - Britain’s favourite action figure - in glorious stop motion. The 60-second film sees the tiny soldier save money on his tank insurance and feel so epic that he abandons his post and - along with dozens of his comrades - performs a euphoric dance number across the desert warzone to Cece Peniston’s Finally. The script culminates in epic fashion, with our hero tearing his clothes off and continuing the dance in his iconic built-in blue underpants.

Our 35 year plus audience cover a broad range of UK adults, grappling with the various financial strains of modern family life. We needed to find a cultural insight that could bind them together and research showed they shared a common bond as new or experienced parents – a sentimentality around their own childhoods and a subsequent shared nostalgia for The ‘80s. This insight was supported by cultural trends such as the viewing success of Star Wars and Stranger Things and the return of ‘80s inspired fashion. We defined our creative strategy for 2017 as ‘Build the most epic expression of ‘You’re So MoneySuperMarket’ yet, by harnessing our audiences’ collective love of the ‘80s’.

As such, we turned to Action Man - everyone’s favourite 80’s childhood toy and all his wonderful different guises and used an army of Action Man characters to perform to the nostalgic track ‘Finally’ by CeCe Peniston.

The Stop Frame animation process took 10 days to shoot 60” worth of footage that included challenging camera moves, moving vehicles and dancing action figures. Culminating in a complex final scene with 28 figurines simultaneously dancing. To make the doll look as everyone remembered him we had to completely remake it with wires and fixings inside him so that he could hold dance moves. All the clothes had to be reinforced and stiffened so they wouldn’t boil and crease under the light. Finally the desert landscapes were painstakingly created with thousands of hand-painted poly rocks and matt painted backgrounds.

CG Face animation and lip sync

The brief was that Action Man needed to lip sync to the VO as well as have subtle facial animation. Due to a tight schedule it was not possible to achieve this in camera so it had to be done in post.

The explosions were added in comp and had to look like they were animated in camera. This required layering up stock footage and effects and R&D to ensure it worked with the stop motion footage.

Because of the scale of the sets the backgrounds are digital matte paintings which were added during post. They had to match the set and look natural as it was shot in camera which required a lot of skill.

Finally, the brain-embedding, spine-stirring 90’s gay house anthem was frankly the only choice for action mans feel good coming out party. Known for its use in Priscilla Queen of the desert and at gay clubs across the land added the perfect cultural context.