Postoffice Amsterdam. (not a real post office…no stamps etc.) - Oostenburgervoorstraat 85-87

“Carelessly posting things online can have consequences for others.”

In this campaign by the Dutch Government (Rijksoverheid), three cats share their stories on how they have become a victim of their bosses posting ‘funny’ video footage of them on social media. They encourage us to think twice about what we post. Once for ourselves, and once for others.

CGI cat animation

Once again Postoffice has been asked to create photoreal CGI animal animations, in this case cats. With our experience in creating a CG panther animation we were asked by TBWA to create 3 CGI cats for this government campaign. The campaign centers around three viral videos that the agency found online. We had to recreate the cats from these videos so they could be interviewed on their experience with online bullying.

Postoffice’s production department, Postoffice Create!, handled all pre-production and the shoot. After which the VFX department worked on creating these cats in CGI and animating them to the voice overs. The compositing team made sure they fit right into the live action plate.

Sound Design & Voice Casting

Since Postoffice has created all animations from scratch, we had the privilege of casting and recording the Dutch voice actors Elise Schaap, Ruben van der Meer, and Ronald Goedemondt before the animation of the three cats was done. Since they were not limited by timing their performance to video, they were able to act freely, like the original voice actors do for blockbuster animation films. For the English versions you see here, we dubbed to the Dutch animations – which turned out very well too.

Spice it up

For the real life footage, we used the original sound as a basis, but spiced it up for more impact and fun. The sound in Slappy Cat for example is our sound designer Marcel hitting himself (he was not hurt during the recording process).