ToyotaRAV4
The premise
A city that has
seen it all.
A character-driven commercial for the all-new Toyota RAV4, developed from the first idea to the final film. A city that has seen it all, and one small witness who can’t look away.
The challenge
The challenge was to create an animated film that carries the style of the all-new Toyota RAV4: its sharper lines, its sculpted stance and the quiet confidence of an electrified SUV moving through the city.
The RAV4 had to be the hero of every frame without a single spec on screen. Design, presence and emotion would do the selling, through a story told by an unexpected admirer and built with the same process we bring to every campaign.
The idea
New Yorkers have seen everything, so the admiration had to come from somewhere unexpected. Instead of people turning their heads, we gave the role to a witness with no reason to care about cars at all: a city squirrel.
At sunrise a white RAV4 glides through Manhattan. One squirrel spots it and can’t let go. It darts between commuters, climbs a lamp post, races along the branches of the park and leaps a stone pillar to keep the car in sight. The chase ends on a quiet tree-lined street, the RAV4 heading into the light and the squirrel smiling.
The thought underneath is simple: a design so striking that even nature stops to look. The tone stays clean, quiet and golden: an electrified RAV4 that moves through the city lightly, and so quietly that its biggest admirer is the one creature paying the closest attention.
Storyboard
Twenty panels were drawn before a single frame was generated. The storyboard locked framing, rhythm and the emotional beats — discovery, chase, leap and the final smile — so every generated shot had a precise job inside the edit.
Character design
The squirrel was built as a real character, not a one-off generation. A full design package — T-pose, expression sheet, turnaround, jump poses and a facial close-up — defined its anatomy, fur colour, proportions and personality.
That package keeps the character consistent from a blurred sprint between commuters to an extreme close-up, and makes it reusable across a campaign: social cut-downs, key visuals or a sequel.
Production
Each shot was produced from the storyboard with AI-assisted image and video generation, directed shot by shot for lens, light and performance. Vehicle, character and New York environments were then brought together through compositing, grading and edit into one continuous golden-hour look.
It is the same pipeline we use on client work: the idea first, a locked visual plan, then craft in every frame.
