2022 was not an easy year for travel, as anyone who took a flight can attest.  Along with an incredible amount of pent-up demand, there were also a lot of nerves and stress about what might happen on a trip.

 As Canada’s leading airline, Air Canada was taking the brunt of the criticism about travel chaos, and operating in a deficit of emotional goodwill.

This led to an opportunity during the busy holiday season: Help Air Canada connect with Canadians on an emotional level and increase brand favourability after a chaotic year.

Air Canada, as they have done for the last several years—when holiday travel was an option— decided remind people that the holidays offer a sense of hope and optimism, and an emotionally driven reason to hop on a plane: the chance to reunite with loved ones 

The Stopover was a complicated spot, from an animation perspective. Showing mountains, lakes, and clouds, involves a lot of different CGI programs and simulations to bring it to life. We then needed to combine these elements with the characters who were created in yet another software.

More than 30 artists were involved in bringing Santa’s workshop to life: modeling and texturing the workshop, the toys, and the setting itself.

Feathers are always a challenge for CGI, and cannot be completed by multiple artists, so only two artists were involved in this phase, creating the feathers one-by-one.

Finally, we need to animate the birds. They needed to look realistic without losing the charm of classical animation. One of the key decisions was that the loon had to peck things with its beak—open doors, play with the wooden duck—the young loon never uses his wings as hands, to remain authentic.