Johnny Kelly and Nous Vous animate a motley crew of abstract characters for Facebook

Johnny Kelly, animation director at Nexus, has worked with illustration collective Nous Vous and Facebook’s in-house studio The Factory to create Good Adds Up, a personalised animated film for the platform. Commissioned for Facebook’s two billion members celebration, it has appeared on every users’ feed.

“This undoubtedly has the biggest audience of anything I’ve worked on,” Johnny says, “which is quite terrifying and comes with its own set of challenges.” Populated by a motley crew of characters made by Nous Vous, the film sees these wobbly, colourful creatures interacting with photos and highlights drawn from each user’s Facebook history.

The concept is based on the theme of the title, Good Adds Up. “I thought of ways these characters could ‘add up’ too, coming together and becoming more than the sum of their parts,” Johnny explains.

He and the team at Nexus then invited Nous Vous to collaborate. “I’m a long time fan but had never seen their work animated. Our animators really loved making those designs move because each character was so different to the last.

“We had to invent a set characters that didn’t feel overly-specific to one country or another," says Johnny. "But that’s the nice thing about animation; weirdly it’s easier to identify with a character if he’s a little abstracted, than one that is figurative and realistic.”