The agency also tapped production company 1st Avenue Machine
as a creative partner. Mr. Hahn said the limitations of the project
required the talent of an experienced animator who could "create
economies inside the animation and move the least amount of atoms
to tell the most amount of story." 1stAve director Nico Casavecchia
served in that role and helped to create animatics that laid out,
atom by atom, how the story would unfold. The storyboards were
translated into grids then handed off to the scientists to
replicate.
Nerdiest Project Ever
"It was hardcore, the nerdiest project I've ever participated
in," said Mr. Casavecchia. "It was an amazing process from a
technical standpoint, but the limitations were the most interesting
thing about it." He said the main obstacles were coming up with a
"common language" between the creative teams and the scientist --
as well as the 5000 atom maximum. "Each movement of an atom in each
frame would count as one process,'" he said. "That adds up pretty
quickly."
But perhaps the most peculiar snafu was the IBM researchers'
"retro-futuristic" technology. "They had lots of high tech
equipment around the project, but the actual technology moving the
atoms was like a really old vintage computer that used floppy
discs," said Mr. Casavecchia. "It was like vintage and hi-tech at
the same time, but to change that would have meant restructuring
everything." As a result, the scientists were unable to work with
the initial animatics, so "we had to come up with a system to write
software they could use to translate the animatic to something they
could use as reference," he said.
On the story itself, "We wanted to go with something simple and
childlike," said Mr. Hahn. "A bunch of us were sitting around on a
Friday night, talking about different scenarios, a character you
feel empathy for. We all went back to the original animations we
grew up on." Added Associate Creative Director Niels West,
"Something we kept seeing was 'The Red Balloon.' It's such a simple
story."
Turning Scientists Into Animators
As adorable as Adam and his atom are, the most endearing
characters of the campaign are the scientists themselves, whose
passion about the project is evident in a series of behind the
scenes videos on IBM's YouTube channel. An especially moving
moment is when IBM Research Principal Investigator Andreas Heinrich
considers the impact of the project. "If I can. . . get a thousand
kids to join science, rather than go to law school, I'd be super
happy," he said.