A real treat to animate such a great concept. Creative agency the Gardeners asked Artbox Studio (where I was working at the time) to produce the commercial for ‘Het Vergeten Kind’. The campaign concept fitted Kees Sparnaaij and myself, like a glove.

In the commercial the Forgotten Child Foundation asks to sign the petition to stop the unnecessary relocating of children, because these vulnerable children hardly have any future prospects and this is very damaging to their development.

The concept for the TV commercial arose from the fact that for most people - especially in the Netherlands - a home is self-evident. This is often also evident in nursery rhymes. 'We are not going home yet' is a positive children's song that is usually sung on school trips, but if you listen to it from the perspective of children who have moved from home to home, it gets a totally different meaning. The repetition in the song works well as a metaphor. And repeatedly going in circles with a music box enforces that message even more.

The Gardeners gave us references to little wooden toy music boxes and mentioned they loved the look of the boy from “The Haunting of Hill House”. We immediately felt that simplicity was key. Therefore we wanted to stay with one shot, and even though it’s CG, we also kept in mind that everything we designed could be real and the mechanism would work. We believe that this gave us certain restrictions that helped us and everyone involved making the right decisions.