An animated commercial for a zoo without any recognizable animals in it? The new 100-second spot, “Artis Lives,” for the Artis Royal Zoo in Amsterdam, is a creative and entertaining spot that succeeds in promoting the Artis zoo’s mission without tipping too far into conventional animal cliches.
The abstract creatures are the creation of Christian Borstlap, who conceived, wrote, designed, and directed the spot. He also runs the Amsterdam creative studio Part of a Bigger Plan, that served as the agency for the spot.
“There’s fur and feathers in the film, there’s poo and arses, there’s flying crawling and growling species, but there’s no real animals,” Borstlap told the website It’s Nice That. “They are depicting life’s features. It’s an abstraction of life. There’s some similarities to natural design, for example the plant stems are like a reptile’s scaly tail. That created an impression of life that felt logical, not artificial, and created an enormous amount of freedom for the execution, as nothing needed to be realistic.”
