Lidl GB has launched a colourful new initiative to promote healthy eating and encourage children to embrace fruit and veg in a fun, accessible way. We talked to character designer and animator Emily Redfearn.
If I were an avocado, how would I move? Or a strawberry? A spring onion, maybe? These are questions most of us seldom ponder, but they were front of mind for illustrator and animator Emily Redfearn as she created a charming new campaign for one of the UK’s biggest supermarket chains. Lidl Foodies is a project that has put groceries in motion, encouraging kids to eat healthily and showing them how to grow their own fruit and veg.
It all began with a pitch to create a set of simple yet impactful fruit- and veg-based characters for kids. Emily mocked up the imagery along with some straplines, which opened the door to an extensive animation project.
Collaborating closely with Lidl via the campaign agency, Accenture Song, and her talent agency, Roar, Emily then developed the characters further and applied the Lidl colour palette. It happens to be full of primary colours, which are ideal for children. All the while, she kept in mind that the strawberry, lemon, pepper, avocado, spring onion and tomato would come to life in short animations.
“We wanted to make sure they all had their own vibe,” says Emily. “It was important that we played off the natural shape of the characters. The avocado is very clunky and heavy, so we knew the action would need to reflect that, whereas the strawberry felt very springy and bouncy – both in taste and look – which we reflected in the bouncy movements we gave it.”
Whenever she needed inspiration for the project, Emily could step out into her garden, where she already grows lots of veggies—including ones in the animations. Using her hands-on experience, she was able to storyboard the instructional content, which some of the art directors tested on their own children.
Propagating strawberries is actually trickier to explain than you might think, as Sheffield-based Emily explains: “We debated how literally to take some of the instructions. For example, normally, you shave a piece off a strawberry in order to plant the seeds, as they are so small. In practice, it almost looked gory to have the strawberry peel off its own skin! So, we creatively solved a lot of problems like this by simplifying it down to just a single seed being plucked.”
WIP: Line work and frames from the storyboard.
Initially titled Lidl Growers, Emily developed an impactful logotype for the campaign. While her logotype may not have been deployed, she still had fun creating it, and there may yet be scope for her to expand the Lidl Foodies world.
“The amount of work involved in the project was a challenge,” says Emily. “There were many moving parts happening at once, with the animations and logo all being developed. It was a dream project in that way – everyone involved, from Lidl to the Accenture Song agency to my own agents Skye Kelly-Barrett and Sally Paley, were all so on the ball that it made the workload run so smoothly.”
