FCB Health (IPG Health) — Manny Awards Category Bumper, AI Video Production · 2024
Manny Bumper: Advert Animals (Film Noir)
A group effort building FCB Health's Manny Awards category bumper: an anthropomorphic-animal film noir short (a cat detective on the phone, a fur-collared wolf at a smoky poker table) rendered in moody, neon-lit 3D. Won Best Medical Device at the 2024 Manny Awards, one of 13 wins across the IPG Health network that year.
Challenge
Every year, agencies shortlisted for a Manny Award are asked to produce a short bumper video for their category, played at the show only if they win: a real production push against a deliverable that might never air. For 2024, the team leaned into a cinematic concept: anthropomorphic animal characters as hardboiled detectives in a rain-slicked, neon-lit city, built almost entirely with then-new generative AI tools at a moment when most of the industry was still deciding whether AI belonged in the pipeline at all.
Approach
It was a group effort spanning the studio's full AI toolkit that year: Midjourney for character and environment generation, Photoshop's AI-assisted retouching to keep every character on-model across dozens of variations, Soundraw for an AI-generated score. My part, as it usually is, was solving the scenes that didn't just fall out of a prompt: the shots that needed real compositing and consistency work to hold together as a finished cinematic piece rather than a collection of generated stills. The studio also put together a companion reel that year documenting the process end to end, including work on other characters built with the same toolkit.
Impact
The category won: Best Medical Device at the 2024 Manny Awards, one of 13 wins across the IPG Health network that year, meaning this bumper actually played in front of the industry at the awards show, not just internally.
A companion case study video documenting the AI process and workflow behind the bumper and the studio's other characters that year.
