iittala

Tanssi

POcko lab + Klaus Haapaniemi for iitala

Legendary Finnish design company iittala approached us to direct and produce a social media animation campaign, along with artist Klaus Haapaniemi. We were inspired by Haapaniemi's upcoming tableware collection for entitled: Tanssi – A story is about to begin. The film has been amazingly received and the results were beyond expectations.

The story

Tanssi – meaning ‘dance’ in Finnish – is a pattern inspired by the visual designs by Klaus Haapaniemi for the Finnish National Opera production of “The Cunning Little Vixen”, a Czech opera by Leoš Janáček, and formed the basis for the animation.

The sad yet beautiful story exploring the co-existence of animals, humans and the eternal cycle of life, comes alive in Haapaniemi’s rich designs on tableware created by Finnish designer Heikki Orvola. Described as a comic opera, “The Cunning Little Vixen” contains a serious theme: ranging from children’s entertainment to a tragedy. Our aim was to showcase the characters of the opera through dance and ultimately love.

The work

The concept of the animation was to allude to Eastern shadow puppetry and Victorian theatre.  A forest was the proposed setting – a natural habitat of the animals, yet still interesting enough to create variety and enhance the operatic mood. The characters are surrounded by unusual trees and vegetation, somewhat “other-worldy”, yet still familiar to the viewer. 

The resultS

The film has been amazingly received and the results were beyond expectations. The animation was a success on the brand's social platforms, reaching more than 18K views - one of the most viewed videos ever shared by the brand. In addition, the film has been displayed on iitala's website, as well as in iitala's stores during the launch of the collection. 

It was a great pleasure to produce the animation with Klaus, and with the excellent animation skills of Ben Pearce.