To mark the launch of Farmershub.co.uk, the new site dedicated to the latest news and debate from the British farming community, PepsiCo UK has built an animated, sustainable sculpture, combining photography and video to tell the story behind Walkers crisps.
The animation was created by Royal College of Arts graduate, Sarah Beeby, and captures the journey a potato makes from field to packet, highlighting some of innovative sustainability initiatives PepsiCo uses in the creation of the nation’s favourite crisps.
The film uses a range of animation techniques, such as hinged flipbook and a working zoetrope, to bring the process of how Walkers make their crisps, to life. In order to reflect the themes of sustainability in the story, Beeby crafted the sculpture from recycled materials such as second hand jeans, old bike tyres and reclaimed wood.
The potato field featured in the animation is modelled on the design of a Zoetrope, to capture the natural movements in the fields, including the shifting clouds and a hare which made its way into the shot. To simulate the movement of potatoes growing, a rotating wooden block with images of different stages of a potato’s growth were attached to all four sides of the blocks and then spun every five frames.
The quality check stage of the potato to packet story was captured via an adaption of the mutoscope, an early motion picture device, before moving onto the potatoes’ journey, by road, to the Walkers site. This section was inspired by the knock on effect typically seen in a Rube Goldberg machine.
The ‘road’ that the PepsiCo truck travels down is made from second hand tyres which is both in keeping with the theme of transportation at this stage and the overall idea of sustainability. In the final stage, documentary footage is shown to illustrate the inside of the Walkers site where the crisps are made. Second hand plumbing pipes and wooden blocks are also used to give authenticity to the working dynamics of a crisp site.
The animation is featured on Farmershub.co.uk, the new online community for the nation’s potato, oats and apple farmers to showcase best practice and discuss the most pressing issues for British Agriculture.
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