(AI consulting & custom character pipeline)
For Canopy’s Pack4Good campaign, creative studio People’s Television, with teams in New York and Washington, D.C., set out to dramatise how packaging choices impact forests through a quirky rom-com storyline featuring “Sweetfella,” a chocolate-bar hero, and Flora, a forest guardian.
Although People’s Television is renowned for festival-calibre documentaries like Minted, which premiered at Tribeca and now streams on Netflix, this was their first project built primarily with AI. They had narrative and motion-graphics talent in house but knew unforeseen hurdles could threaten the immovable Valentine’s deadline. To de-risk the schedule, they invited Arthur Machado to join as AI consultant, having seen previous work in the same space and knowing it would help them achieve their goals within the time constraints of the project.
Drawing on prior experience with similar AI productions, Arthur mapped a pipeline flagging and bypassing likely roadblocks before they surfaced. Together with director Cutter Hodierne, the team set a clear cadence for review sessions and made astonishing progress in-between. When the biggest issue arose, keeping Sweetfella’s friendly expression and signature chocolate-shaving texture perfectly consistent, Arthur jumped on the tools himself to train a custom LoRA model.
The campaign video launched on Valentine’s Day and headlined Canopy’s call for “forest-free” packaging, with the article praising Sweetfella and Flora’s love story as a fresh way to visualise complex supply-chain issues.
Client: Canopy Planet
Executive Producer: Nicholas Bruckman & Ryder Haske
Director & Editor: CUTTER HODIERNE
Producer: Jenny Catherall
Animator: Ivan Kander
AI Consultant: Arthur Machado
VO Artist: Meghan Hoople
February 10, 2025