Mining the infamous Windows Blue Screen of Death for more fun than you thought possible, the BUCK crew merge retro ascii design with traditional 2D animation in this wholly unique anthem film for cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

Daniel Oeffinger, group creative director at BUCK: “The creative jumping off point was a reset that would set the stage for a new Coinbase-led world entirely built from code. We wanted this world to be fun, slightly irreverent, and to ride the line between ‘how did they do that? and ‘who cares, this is a party.’
 

“We wanted this world to be fun, slightly irreverent, and to ride the line between ‘how did they do that? and ‘who cares, this is a party.'”

 
“To hit those marks, we explored a lot of technical possibilities that would push this look and feel further than a traditional ascii-mapped approach. A lot of traditional ascii image-mapping solutions are an over-the-top filter, where pixel values are converted to image sets, without much ability to control the rendered ‘code’.

‘We needed more control over the ascii, something closer to a particle system. Our animation team, led by Anton Thallner, landed on a workflow that combined 2D and 3D inputs to create a controllable ascii set-up that could be influenced by dynamics, gravity, and disruption. We used a combination of Houdini, Cavalry, and Cinema 4D to accomplish the various challenges each shot presented.”

Watch the process reel:
 

 

 
Client: Coinbase

Agency: Isle of Any
Founder/CCO: Toby Treyer-Evans, Laurie Howell
CD: Ben Brown
Design: Melanie Reichart
MD: Elspeth Ross
Producer: Topher Cochrane

Production: BUCK
EP: Justin Harris
GCD: Daniel Oeffinger, Jon Gorman
CD: Joyce N. Ho
Producer: Tracey Uminowicz, Paul Winze
2D Animation Director: Anton Thallner
Editor: Talia Mazzarella, Heather Bartholomae
Designer: Yukyung Lee, Ben Nichols, Audrey Lee, Gunnar Pettersson, Sam Lee
Animator: Federico Reano, Hannah Sun, Johan Eriksson, Romain Loubersanes, Tinghe Yang, Adam Webber, Matty Deans
Retail Animation: Sean Merk, Ryan Musselman, Johan Eriksson
Storyboard: Matty Deans, Tinghe Yang
Production Coordinator: Jacklyn Reid Hemmings
Modeling: Eugene Goryachev
Head of 2D: Mercy Lomelin, Pete Kallstrom
Head of Post: Jose Fuentes
CT Consultants: Matt Kenefick, Evan Boehm

Edit: Cartel
Editor: Eddie Ringer, Tony Wang
Producer: Kong Yang, Melini Kartha
EP: Evyn Bruce

Sound design: Wave
Sound Designer: Aaron Reynolds
EP: Vicky Ferraro
Producer: Eleni Giannopoulos

Color: Ethos
Colorist: Sam Howells
Producer: Ben Ferren