Today we’re going to explore the wonderful and diverse work of Royale. In their own words, Royale is a design company, a creative production company, and a digital production company. In other words, they do a lot of things, and it seems that they do them all well.
Founded about 9 years ago by Jen Lucero, Jayson Whitmore, and Brien Holman, Royale is built around a core team of creatives with a group of “permalancers” and freelancers who take on all kinds of tasks. In an interview with Motionographer, Holman stated, “We’re all generalists at heart, we all wear multiple hats.”
While they may be generalists, they certainly aren’t lacking expertise in any area. Royale acts as both a studio and an agency, taking projects from concept to completion, and this approach, no doubt, gives them greater creative freedom and closeness to the projects they take on that shows in the final product.
Let’s take a look at a few of Royale’s projects.
For this Starbucks Gold Status spot, Royale took an approach that they are really good at, textured illustration. This spot feels familiar and new at the same time, leaning on styles that have become popular over the last few years, but with unique touches that are surprising and fun.
The animation is whimsical where coffee cups become characters with personalities. The subtle additions of textures add a sense of depth to the flat illustrated design, and there is a fluidity to the entire piece that makes it easy to watch again and again.
On the flip side, Royale is not afraid to dive into live-action and intense 3D. Take this spot for the Oculus Rift and it’s new touch controllers. What starts off as a nicely shot party scene for a gaming system, quickly transforms into a fantasy world that perfectly captures what it is like to play with a high-end VR system.
As the room melts away, elements from the game take form and suddenly a new space emerges, sucking the players into a game that feels real. The result is a captivating spot and a great metaphor for the experience.
Let’s take a look at something a little different that just shows how imaginative the team at Royale really is. In 2015, they decided to create a desk calendar for their clients and friends. This alone was super creative, filled with fun illustrations of characters and designs. They produced the calendar on a letterpress for a nice vintage feel.
But then they turned the entire vintage aspect on it’s head by adding an augmented reality component to it. They build their own mobile app that would work with the calendar to show you fun animations when you held the calendar to it.
Like with a lot of things Royale produces, it was filled with surprises, a spirit of fun, and a load of technical and creative talent.
When it comes to straight-ahead 3D, Royale has a handle on that. In this Nike spot for the Lunar shoe family, beautifully rendered Nike shoes come to life and make you forget that what you are looking at isn’t real.
But, they are equally comfortable with cel style animation, like the style used for this International Olympic Committee spot that has a feel of a vintage cartoon. It passes on realism and instead incorporates an aspect of storytelling through simple sketches and fun animations.
Royale definitely covers a lot of ground in their work. From high-end 3D to illustration and live-action, they do it all. Here’s a little overview of some of their other projects.
For more information on Royale visit weareroyale.com.
