With love for 80s punk bops and singing dinosaurs and 6 months of intense but rewarding CGI animation with Passion Pictures, our Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping musical spot for the release of PlayStation’s new LEGO Horizons Zero Dawn was born. Overseeing the project from storyboards and animatics through pre-vis and animation, the spot came together in a span of just over 6 months and involved the difficult task of world-building within an existing IP, as well as several stakeholders from PlayStation, Guerrilla Games (game developer) and LEGO.

In addition to the animation, the project had an additional layer of being a musical number with lipsyncing characters. After securing licensing approval from Chumbawumba, we went through the careful process of both selecting a music vendor and working with them to create a rendition of Tubthumping that both fit into the playful LEGO Horizons world while still remaining true to the original classic. We had the privilege of working with the original voice actors from the game, plus casting a professional opera singer as our one and only Thunderjaw - who does not actually speak in the game (was a bit of a hurdle to get that client approved!).

Included below are the original animatics and concept designs so that you can get a sense of how this project came together and how far we came from a simple sketch and placeholder vocals.