The London motion directors at Kitchen have unveiled a gorgeously dazzling and psychedelic animation for The Great Frog Vintage Market.
Your eyeballs are in for a wild ride if you happen to land on any of the social accounts promoting The Great Frog – a jewellery brand going back to the 1970s, famous for its eclectic rock star collections. Bold, colourful and quirky, the animation will beguile your brain with wizards and bats, a forest of giant mushrooms, plus a groovy version of hell, which ends with you floating in a lava lamp inhabited by a great big magenta and turquoise snake.
This kaleidoscope of 1970s references was cooked up by Kitchen, the animation team comprised of Rachinta Platts and George Coffey at the London production studio Jelly.
“The Great Frog came to us with a really cool idea of going through four different lands or worlds that represent the jewellery in their new collection. A wizard land, a comic book land, a mushroom world and Hell with a Baphomet pendant,” says George.
“The challenge was to go through all these different styles but still make it feel like one cohesive piece,” he continues. “We both have an affinity for ’80s and ’90s retro styles, so we wanted to bring elements of that in whilst also taking from some comic styles you may see. I personally enjoyed drawing a land of mushrooms using only greyscale.”
Mushroom world with WIP sketch.
Having just finished an animation about super pollutants for the Climate & Clean Air Coalition, working with The Great Frog gave the animators a chance to scratch some different style itches. Another wonderful thing about the piece was that it came about through word of mouth via Dark Arts Coffee, one of Kitchen’s ongoing clients.
The deliverables included a 10-second ident and a 20-second social animation. Despite the limited duration, George and Rachinta managed to pack in a mad amount of characters and detail, all on a very tight timeline.
“We created all the artwork in Photoshop,” says Rachinta. “We had a relatively short amount of time to animate it all, so we composited it in After Effects, adding the camera moves and then cel-animated elements for an organic flow. We then used After Effects to add the glows, dust and colour offset transitions.”
In many ways, it was a dream project for animators who love having the freedom to explore and experiment. With its clashing colours, there was a fair amount of ‘accident method’ during production.
Colour testing the lava lamp scene.
“The clients were great the whole way,” adds George. “They were always letting us know how buzzed they were, which was great encouragement. The Jelly team have been amazing about it, and anyone who’s responded to it has only had positive things to say.”
2024 was a big year for Kitchen, as it picked up new clients in sustainability, Costa Coffee, and continued old alliances such as Dark Arts. In 2025, the plan is to keep up the momentum, get fresh pitches out there, and begin some new personal projects, too.
