Ad agency BBDO created Ideas Are Scary for General Electric back in 2014. The spot used a bizarre creature to illustrate how new ideas can be scary, messy, and fragile, before becoming something beautiful (presumably, in the hands of GE engineers).
Whether or not this is an effective piece of branding and advertising is open to debate, but there’s little doubt that the creature effects work in it is top notch. That shouldn’t be surprising since the “Scary Idea” was brought to life by Legacy Effects, working from a design by talented conceptual artist Bodin Sterba.
Initially, the direction was that this “bird-like” creature had to be part Muppet, part Dr. Seuss…The design process actually went on for a few months. The direction went from more bird-like, to less bird-like, to not at all bird-like. They asked for something that could be from The Labyrinth, but then that was too creature-like, so they wanted something like Big Bird, with simple, yet soulful eyes. They director and the agency were looking for the “ah-hah” moment. Eventually they settled on a furry bipedal creature
Character Designer Bodin Sterba
Bodin has a really nice gallery of his concept work from Ideas Are Scary on his web site:
Via the Puppet Films Group on Facebook.
