Bogotá Beer Company (BBC), Colombia's top craft brewery, wanted a special way to celebrate their 18th anniversary. The design studio LIP won the pitch proposing a campaign centered on a six-episode animated web series. With a jazz band as the story thread, and characters illustrated by Leo Espinosa, the series tells the story of a man’s (Bernardo) journey, navigating successes and setbacks in his endeavor to lead BBC from its humble beginnings to becoming the top known craft beer in Colombia.

I was appointed by LIP to direct the project. With the story and characters ready, My treatment centered on telling Bernardo’s Hero’s Journey while paying tribute to the city that inspired the brand. I wanted to capture the essence of traditional Bogotá using a mix of broad and detailed views of the city’s parks, plazas, streets, neighborhoods, and unique facades. Abstract shots of city walls with their textures and colors provided clean backgrounds for the music band to play against.

Character designs by Leo Espinosa

Bogotá is known for its vibrant murals and graffiti, but to keep the focus on our characters, we removed any competing graphic elements. For the shots layout i used different color themes and varied the scale of the characters in relation to their surroundings. Along with photographer Manuela Uribe, we shot the city early in the morning to avoid cars and people, capturing the city in its quieter moments.

WATCH THE SERIES  

The story unfolds chronologically

The series set records for the most viewed online content for the brand and won 3 Dorado awards for best web series and 1 silver Pencil Award.