Ariel Costa Directs Dark Anime Thriller for Siemens China

Siemens released its new film this week, a dark anime short created by R/GA Shanghai, produced by Final Frontier and directed by Ariel Costa.

The film is designed to attract applicants for Siemens China’s Cyber Defence Center which helps its customers protect themselves against an increasing volume of cybercriminals and hacker attacks.

2D animation is a new creative direction for Siemens in China and further demonstrates the rising demand for animation in the world’s second largest advertising market.

The insight for the unique and surprising approach came when Professor Wen Tang, Head of the Industrial Security Lab, met with R/GA Shanghai creatives and likened his department to the Night’s Watch, a military order in Game of Thrones that guards the Wall separating the Seven Kingdoms from the lands beyond.

R/GA Shanghai executive creative director, Terence Leong said, “Our creative ambition was to tell a simple story to inspire those who are looking for a meaningful career to consider Siemens. It was Professor Tang who described the department as “guardians” and that immediately sparked off the entire storyline.”

The 40” vertical format film is made for WeChat, also accessible via a web link to a QR that takes them to the app. Users can then experience the satisfaction of the job by playing a simple H5 game in which the objective is to debug hackers.

Brazilian animator and director, Ariel Costa aka BlinkMyBrain, is represented in Asia by Shanghai-based production company Final Frontier. “Guardians” is Costa’s debut film in China for and his first foray in to an anime aesthetic. He explained, “It's not very often that a client comes to you with a playground, but that was the case with this project.”

Leong said,  “We had so much fun designing the characters and it exciting to create a really dark universe where Cyber Security Officers fight hackers head on.” 

The music and sound design was handled by Final Frontier’s in-house audio unit Cachorro Loco led by Argentine maestro, Facundo Capece.

The project is the second high-profile collaboration between R/GA Shanghai and Final Frontier following the landmark “Road to HBL” campaign for Nike earlier this year.

Final Frontier executive producer Gustavo Karam said, “Once again Terence and his crew created an amazing brief, this time giving the world the opportunity to see Ariel Costa’s talent shining through with his first anime-style animation.”

Terence Leong added, “Working with Ariel and Final Frontier was an absolute pleasure, as always. We still can’t believe the clients approved the script. But it takes a crazy partner like Final Frontier to trust and embrace a stupid idea like ours, and take it to the next level. I respect that.” 

Costa also paid tribute to his creative partners,

“I was lucky to be involved, and even more fortunate to have Terrence and his team as clients. They supported 100% of our vision and trusted our direction. We wouldn't have been able to pull it off without Final Frontier. I couldn't ask for sharper producers or more skilled artists with whom to collaborate".