Instagram
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Eye on the Ball

Cricket isn’t just a game in India. It’s a core part of their culture. When telling a story about cricket for Instagram, we made sure every aspect of our production was set up to tell it authentically.
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Our first step was to get the right voices in the room. Our cultural consultant gathered a ton of reference and provided important context that ensured our depiction was precise. And motion designers from India drew on their lived experience for all the key creative choices.
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For example, our initial storyboard showed a group of kids playing cricket on the streets. Illustrator and animator Mayukh Goswami caught a critical detail: on the streets of Mumbai, kids didn’t play with a traditional cricket ball. They played with a tennis ball.
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If we kept the cricket ball from our initial storyboard, our audience would have been taken out of the story. We worked diligently to ensure every detail had accurate specificity.
‍
Cricket isn’t just a game in India. It’s a core part of their culture. When telling a story about cricket for Instagram, we made sure every aspect of our production was set up to tell it authentically.
‍
Our first step was to get the right voices in the room. Our cultural consultant gathered a ton of reference and provided important context that ensured our depiction was precise. And motion designers from India drew on their lived experience for all the key creative choices.
‍
For example, our initial storyboard showed a group of kids playing cricket on the streets. Illustrator and animator Mayukh Goswami caught a critical detail: on the streets of Mumbai, kids didn’t play with a traditional cricket ball. They played with a tennis ball.
‍
If we kept the cricket ball from our initial storyboard, our audience would have been taken out of the story. We worked diligently to ensure every detail had accurate specificity.
‍

Our Role

Script consultation, research and development, visual concepting, illustration, design, 2D, 3D, and cel animation, custom music, and sound design

Timeline

11 weeks

BTS Reel

Credits

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Monkeys Chilling on Rooftops

We weren’t just collecting reference photos from basic online searches. Our animators were sending photo reference from outside their windows. When we saw details like monkeys chilling on rooftops, we knew we had to include them in the final piece. The monkey in our animation presented himself with a bit more modesty than the ones in the reference clips.

Presenting the vibrance and diversity of the people in India accurately was essential. We made sure to include people in more traditional clothing, as well as more modern attire. And the skin tones of our characters were as varied as you’d see across the country.

This project is a perfect example of BIEN’s philosophy of designing with, not for. The lived experience of our team gave us unique insights that shaped more authentic creative. We built a world that felt lived in, where street cricket was played with a stack of rocks instead of stumps.

All these choices allowed us to tell a story that resonated with our audience, rather than pandering to them.

So when Instagram tied their product to this story and said they were celebrating cricket culture, they meant it. We put in the effort to honor the fans with accuracy befitting one of the world’s biggest sports.

BTS Reel