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Character Animation for Consumer Products: S-Market Uutuudet
Ice creams, candies, drinks, and cookies each got their own animated cast. The work sits under S-market’s Elämä on ruokaa (Life is Food) platform, the concept behind S-market’s year-round new-product rollouts. We turned four new product lineups into fully realized character worlds. Each got its own personality, its own comic timing, and its own place inside a shared creative universe. This is what character animation for consumer products looks like when a brand needs four distinct worlds in a single production.
Consumer product marketing lives or dies on the shelf, and increasingly, it lives or dies on the scroll too. Standing out among dozens of near-identical products takes more than clever copy. It takes characters that people remember and want to see again. That is the space these four worlds were built to fill.
Client
SOK / S-Market
Agency
Make It Simple
Building Character Animation for Consumer Products at Scale
The brief called for four original character worlds, delivered inside a single production, without sacrificing craft along the way. S-market runs an uutuudet (new products) push several times a year. These four animated worlds replaced the live-action films S-market had previously shot for each product category. We worked closely with SOK and Make It Simple to build a production system that kept pace with that ambition. Together, we delivered a full slate of character animation for consumer products, including:
- Four 20-second hero commercials, one per product world
- Twelve native social films, three separate scripts per world, versioned for 9:16 and 4:5
- Out-of-home (OOH) executions for all four worlds
- Digital out-of-home (DOOH) versions in both 9:16 and 16:9
- Dedicated high-resolution character stills for each product world
As a result, four very different product worlds still read as one single, unmistakable production.
Design & Development: From Concept to Character
Four character worlds, developed side by side, still called for one consistent design language. That’s how S-market’s brand stayed recognizable across every product world. The design process moved from early concept sketches through fully rigged, expressive characters. Candies, cookies, drinks, and ice creams all followed the same pipeline. Each one was built to hold its own comic timing on screen.
Every character was designed to represent its whole product category, cookies, candies, drinks, or ice creams in general, rather than any single item on the shelf. The designs still lean on familiar, iconic shapes, just without pointing at one specific product.
Each character world was also built to live inside the real world. Every setting was placed at true-to-life scale to match its product. Ice creams live in a cooler bag on a life-size beach, since ice cream belongs to summer. Candies turn up at a sleepover, life-size inside a dollhouse, since candy belongs to a night with friends. Cookies sit in a meeting, life-size inside a coffee room, since cookies belong at work. Drinks show up at a party, life-size on a serving table, since drinks belong to a celebration.
Take a look behind the scenes below. This gallery gathers character design sheets, concept art, storyboards, animatic snippets, render tests, and styleframes from all four productions.
Animatics for Character Animation
Locking the Composition and Timing Before Animation Begins
Every S-market character started as an animatic long before final animation began. Building an animated 2D storyboard let us test each film’s layout, camera movement, and comic timing. Changes still cost almost nothing at this stage. The scripts and the actors’ final dialogue were already locked before animatics began. Every animatic therefore played against real, final voice recordings, not placeholder voiceover. That mattered, since dialogue and comic timing only really land once the actual performance is right.
The director’s focus at this stage stayed narrow. It centered on one continuous long camera take, the characters’ banter, and the timing of the closing reveal. Because the script and dialogue were already so solid going in, these animatics needed very few revision rounds. Only minor changes carried through once production moved into 3D blocking. That upfront alignment protected the production timeline, since fixing direction later costs far more than fixing it here. Read more about how we use animatics in animation production.
Voice casting mattered from this very first stage. Well before final animation began, our actors recorded each character’s voice while working from early character designs and storyboards. That gave them visual reference to shape a performance around. Because the voice track already existed, the animatic itself was built to match that performance. Timing and comic delivery were shaped around it, rather than the other way around.
Character Animation for Consumer Products
Clay Renders: Proving Movement Before Final Rendering
Once animation itself took shape, every scene moved into a previsualization pass, often called a clay render. This greyscale, real time viewport render shows exactly how characters, cameras, and props move, stripped of color, texture, and lighting. Because nothing distracts from movement at this stage, S-market’s team could judge each shot on its own merits. Comic timing, camera swing, and a prop’s believable path all came under scrutiny before anything moved forward. Afterward, once movement earned sign-off, the production advanced into full rendering with confidence instead of guesswork. Costly lighting and texture work only touched shots that had already proven themselves in motion. This same discipline, prove movement before you render it, sits behind every character animation for consumer products campaign we build, S-market’s four worlds included.
Look Development for Character Animation
Look Development: Confirming Light, Material, and Mood Before Full Rendering
Before a single full sequence went into final rendering, every S-market world passed through look development first. Rendering initial still frames let us test lighting, material, color, and overall mood on the actual 3D characters and sets. That beat guessing how a scene might read once motion, sound, and editing came together. Because these stills isolate one variable at a time, feedback stayed specific, right down to whether the ice cream world felt sunny enough. Once the client approved a world’s look, that same lighting setup and color mood carried through every frame of the full sequence. Nothing needed reinventing mid-production. Look development protected both budget and consistency at once. Fixes that took days to catch on thousands of rendered frames took minutes to catch on a single still. Getting light and mood right before rendering is what separates a forgettable spot from character animation people actually remember.
S-market Ice Creams
Playful Character Animation for Consumer Products: Meet S-market’s New Ice Creams
The ice creams chapter plays out on a life-size beach. A whole lineup of cones, popsicles, and chocolate-dipped sticks sits inside a cooler bag, at true-to-life scale. That setting is the point: ice cream belongs to summer, and to the beach. A self-assured ice cream cone leads the introductions, with the rest of the lineup following its lead. Taneli Mäkelä’s voice-over then lands S-market’s signature line. This is character animation for consumer products at its most bite-sized: one setting, one confident character, one campaign line. For the complete behind-the-scenes story, read the full S-market Ice Creams case study.
S-market Candies
Colorful Character Animation for Consumer Products: Meet S-market’s New Candies
Next, the candies chapter moves the action to a sleepover, staged life-size inside a dollhouse. That setting fits the product: candy belongs to a night in with friends. A liquorice candy leads the introductions. The rest of the cast, fruit sweet, marshmallow, candy ribbon and lollipop follows the same beat. Mäkelä’s voice-over then ties the joke back to S-market. Repeating the same structure for a second character world, inside a completely different setting, is deliberate. It shows how character animation for consumer products can scale without feeling repetitive.
S-market Drinks
Refreshing Character Animation for Consumer Products: Meet S-market’s New Drinks
Meanwhile, the drinks chapter is set at a party, staged life-size on a serving table. The setting suits the product too: drinks belong to a celebration. A confident can leads the lineup’s introductions, with the rest of the cast joining in. The campaign’s voice-over and closing line then bring the third chapter home. Here too, character animation for consumer products turns a simple product shot into a character with real presence.
S-market Cookies
Warm, Character-Led Animation for Consumer Products: Meet S-market’s New Cookies
Finally, the cookies chapter closes out the series in a meeting, staged life-size inside a coffee room. That setting suits the product: cookies belong at work, wherever people gather over coffee. A chocolate chip cookie opens the introductions and greets the table as “crumbs.” Its fellow biscuits then join in as the new cookies on the shelf. Across all four chapters, this consistent structure ties everything together. It makes character animation for consumer products feel like one campaign, not four separate ideas.
DOOH and Social
Native Versions Across Social and DOOH
A production this size only works if every version feels native to where it plays. Beyond the four hero commercials, each product world also got three entirely separate social scripts. These were written and shot specifically for social, not cut down from the hero film. Every social spot was framed in a square 1:1 format. Every aspect ratio needed for social and DOOH, from 9:16 to 4:5, was then cropped from that square master. Subtitled versions covered sound-off social viewing. Separate no-sound edits ran across various digital out of home (DOOH) ad surfaces, since passing audiences never hear a soundtrack.
DOOH also got its own dedicated animation, built specifically for that format rather than adapted from anything else. In it, every character rushes into frame together to greet passersby on the street, each in its own way. The goal was the feel of a movie poster brought to life. That same grouped arrangement was then also used to produce the still versions for out-of-home. That attention to native fit, not just native size, is what let this travel so far without losing its voice.
OOH and Print
OOH and Print: Retouched Stills for Image Placements
Not every touchpoint moves. Out of home (OOH), posters, and print placements carry no motion, sound, or music of their own. That’s why the production also called for a full set of still images to cover them. Because of that, our team pulled and retouched final high-resolution frames, everything from full character group shots to single-character portraits. Group compositions gave all four worlds a shared moment together. Individual portraits let one character carry a poster, a shelf card, or a print ad entirely on its own. Every frame then went through the same finishing pass, color correction, cleanup, and sharpening. That work let a still hold up just as well at three meters wide as it did on a phone screen. This range, from full casts down to single characters, gave media buyers flexibility across every placement. That’s what this character animation for consumer products campaign called for.
Radio
Radio Spots: Familiar Voice, Brand New Characters
Radio spots for ice creams, candies, drinks, and cookies were produced alongside the animation production. They were part of the same campaign series, each running 15 seconds.
Production Process: Character Animation for Consumer Products
Every one of the four worlds moved through one clear, structured process. That process ran from idea and script, through storyboard and animatic creation, character design and environment design, and rigging. From animation production, it moved into post-production work such as sound design, compositing, and color grading. After that, the production team versioned every asset for its platform and channel. That consistency is what let four character worlds deliver on-brand character animation for consumer products without losing craft.
One Campaign, Four Worlds, Six Months
Four character worlds. About six months from first idea to finished production. One consistent creative system, built to scale.
Bringing animated characters to life directly from real products let each world carry its own personality. Together, they still read as one system. Doing it four times over, inside a single production, meant building a pipeline that could scale without losing craft. That’s what character animation for consumer products looks like when a brief calls for range as much as craft.
Looking for Character Animation for Consumer Products?
If you’re bringing new products to market, your marketing should feel just as memorable as the products themselves. Whether it’s one character or an entire shelf of them, we’re ready to build it with you. After all, character animation for consumer products works best when it’s built as a system, not a one-off. Oh, and take a look at some of our previous character animation work too. A few favorites: Giga Bear, Serla Brand animations, and Merge Mansion: Hopeberry Juice Spike!
