Meet David and Gigi. Just like the humans we see on any given episode of House Hunters, these two lovebirds are searching for the next perfect space to call home. Only David and Gigi actually are birds — a pair of animated, colorful hummingbirds — and their dream home is anywhere they can perch their nest. Or it used to be, anyway. These days, they’re kind of over traditional tree branches and are looking to invest in something a little more… Grounded.
The latest campaign for Airstream and its brand of travel trailers focuses on Nest, the newest edition to its fleet. As David and Gigi flit in and out during the commercial spot, they discover that the trailer is compact, sleek, and pretty cozy. They know it’s meant to be when it even has the perfect name.
The minute-long spot gives audiences the grand tour of Nest as seen through a birds’ eye view. Partnering with one of Airstream’s creative agencies, Upward Brand Interactions, the team at Calabash Animation helped bring David and Gigi’s characters to life.
While Calabash’s Executive Producer Sean Henry and Creative Director Wayne Brejcha loved the client’s decision to use hummingbirds in the campaign, animating the pair came with its fair share of challenges. Brejcha knew that for the campaign to be successful, they would need to find the balance between reality and cartoon-y birds.
Nature documentaries were studied by the Calabash CG team in order to accurately depict the speed — a very specific figure-eight pattern — in which hummingbird wings flap when they take flight. Hummingbirds are also quite small, with several species measuring at no more than 3 inches, so David and Gigi needed to be sized appropriately when they were next to or inside of the Nest. While the logistics behind the birds were being worked out, artists and animators worked on giving the duo a playful personality that didn’t distract away from the Nest trailer.
The end result? As characters, David and Gigi have just as many quirks and lifestyle must-haves as any IRL couple. It’ll be exciting to see their adventures as newfound Nest owners through Airstream’s social media accounts and website. We just hope they remember to keep the twigs, grass, and leaves in nature and not in their new space.
