Advertising for “Kubo and the Two Strings” from Entertainment One is a little bit off the wall thanks to using 3D printed origami-style birds.

If you live in the city of Toronto, keep your eyes peeled whenever you’re on the bus as you could catch a glimpse of 3D printed birds swooping out of bus shelters.

The film, Kubo and the Two Strings has taken 10 years to make. Most interestingly, it meticulously used 3D printing throughout the production. For example, to show one facial reaction for a character, in some cases 130 faces were printed.

Many Oscar-winning actors were involved in the film too, including Matthew McConaughey and Charlize Theron. The story tells the tale of a Japanese boy named Kubo. Using an instrument called a shamisen, he can perform magical acts with the power of music. These include acts such as producing birds which help him throughout the film.

How do Ads and 3D printing fit together?

Thanks to the origami birds in the film,  the teams at Isobar and Vizeum were able to take inspiration from them and use the idea to create an interesting advert for transit shelters.

Isobar’s executive creative director Steve DiLorenzo, told Marketing: “We wanted to use 3D printing and the idea of breaking through the traditional confines of the medium.”

To create fragile looking, yet very strong birds, Isobar worked with 3DPhacktory, a specialist 3D printing firm based in Toronto.

To make sure the birds wouldn’t break, they were printed using a composite plastic. After printing, each bird was spray painted by hand to give beautiful results. Fifteen eye-catching birds fly out of the poster in total. DiLorenzo said.

DiLorenzo said: “They were made to look fragile in the design, but they’re very, very strong. They have to be, just in case there was a tornado or something and one of them flew off.”

After the birds were painted, Astral Media’s team began work and fixed the birds onto the advert. They used fifteen pieces of reinforcing bars to make it appear as though the birds are flying out from behind Kubo.

“It was a very collaborative process to make sure we could execute this in the way we wanted with all its technical details,” said DiLorenzo.

Let us know if you live in Toronto and see these origami-style birds.

(Source: MarketingMag)