Telstra

Wherever You Go

Launch Film

We were commissioned by agency Bear Meets Eagle On Fire to create an elaborate pop-up book CG animation used to promote a new direction for Australian telco Telstra to its internal staff.

Voiced by the legendary actor and comedian Stephen Fry, the 1min CG animation tells the brand story of Telstra’s relationship with its customers and how hard it tries to make the journey together a partnership.

Paper-craft rock outcrop and ferns springing from a sand-coloured page in the Wherever You Go book

Telstra Wherever You Go — a paper lighthouse and stormy waves rising from a navy pop-up spread

Told through a sequence of pop-up book page turns, the story plays out over seven spreads each with detailed paper folding architecture, intricate moving parts and little paper characters.

Wherever You Go pop-up book opens on paper mountains under the words engineering possibilities

We planned and designed the entire project with real paper pop-up techniques to understand how to recreate the book as realistically in CG as possible. Each spread was painstakingly designed and mocked up and for speed, iteration was all done in paper first until all the scenes were approved.

Hands cutting paper foliage on a green mat while building Telstra's pop-up book by hand

Two white paper prototypes of the pop-up scenes, a rocky gorge and a forest, side by side

Telstra's paper desert of orange mesas and cacti standing up from the open book

Animated pop-up scene at night, a torch beam cutting through a dark paper mangrove forest

A glowing paper bird lights a moonlit forest clearing in the Wherever You Go book

We created a bespoke solve in CG to handle the geometric folds, tensions and creases from the paper models, so that the final animations were true to the subtleties of a real pop up book.

Rolling green paper hills with waterfalls and a golden sun, from Telstra's pop-up book

Close-up of a smiling paper cloud drifting past folded mountains and the word possibilities

Underwater paper coral scene with a school of blue fish, from the 2024 pop-up book

Telstra's paper bird character riding the crest of a navy wave beneath a lighthouse

A small spiked paper creature hovering over a glowing pool in a shadowed night scene

Different colour palettes, dynamic lighting changes and gentle camera shifts between each scene spread helped to bring an immersive magic to the viewers engagement with the story.

Wherever You Go spread of green paper hills, waterfalls and a coin path across turquoise

A night version of the paper hills, one bright star hanging above the waterfalls

Object craft for Telstra, a blue paper coral reef rising from the open page

Orange paper hills carrying the end line we go wherever, from Telstra's pop-up book

Closer on the wherever we go end frame, a white paper bird above the orange hills

Credits:

Agency: Bear Meets Eagle on Fire
Micah Walker - CCO/Founder
Cass Jam - Creative Director
Mark Carbone - Creative Director
Emma Wright - Senior Producer

Collider Studio:

Creative Director - Andrew van der Westhuyzen
Head of 3D - David Sujono
Lead 3D Artist - Gareth Chang
3D Character Modelling - Guy Robinson
EP - Tom Slater
Head of Studio Production - Hoss Ghonouie
Studio Producer - Lara Allen

Paper Engineering - Clementine Holden

Colourist - Alina Birmingham

Music and sound effects - Rumble

Voice - Stephen Fry

Wherever You Go

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