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Most wellness ads show perfect lives, calm routines, and polished self-care habits. But Finch took a different approach with its first brand campaign, Whatever It Takes to Get Through the Day. The 3DCG musical short celebrates the weird little habits people use to cope with stress, from hugging cats to binge-watching comfort shows.
Directed by Kirsten Lepore alongside Mathematic and Weirwork, the campaign mixes humor, honesty, and warmth into something relatable. Instead of chasing perfection, the short reminds viewers that everyone has strange ways of surviving difficult days.
What Is Finch?
Before diving into the campaign itself, it helps to understand what Finch actually is.
Finch is a self-care app designed to help users manage their emotional well-being. The app includes features like mood tracking, daily planning, habit building, journaling, and emotional support tools. But what makes Finch different is its tiny digital bird companion.
Users raise and care for a virtual bird pet while also taking care of themselves. Completing healthy activities helps the bird grow and explore its world. The app turns self-care into something playful and comforting instead of stressful or overwhelming.
According to the campaign announcement, around 2 million people use Finch daily. That large audience gave the creative team a big challenge. They needed to create a campaign that felt honest and universal while still fitting the cozy Finch universe.
Instead of focusing on perfect wellness lifestyles, the team chose to focus on reality.
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A Wellness Campaign That Rejects “Perfect” Wellness
Most self-care ads follow the same formula. They show people drinking green smoothies, doing yoga in beautiful apartments, or journaling in golden sunlight. Everything looks clean and aspirational.
But Whatever It Takes to Get Through the Day intentionally moves away from that style.
The short film embraces strange coping habits like:
- Smelling your cat for comfort
- Sitting on top of a running clothes dryer
- Deep cleaning floors during stress
- Watching the same comfort show over and over
- Doomscrolling real estate listings while sitting in the bathroom
- Stress eating adorable cakes
- Creating weird little ritual circles with shells and gems
These moments are silly, awkward, and deeply human at the same time.
That honesty became the heart of the campaign.
According to director Kirsten Lepore, the project immediately felt different from normal commercial work. She explained that the idea had more personality and edge than the usual sweet animated advertisements.
Rather than hiding weird behavior, the campaign celebrates it.
That decision gave the short a tone that feels refreshing in today’s crowded animation and advertising space.
Kirsten Lepore’s Style Was a Perfect Match
If you know the work of Kirsten Lepore, the campaign makes a lot of sense.
Her animation style often combines warmth, humor, emotional honesty, and slightly strange ideas. She has a talent for making weird concepts feel lovable instead of uncomfortable.
That balance became essential for the Finch campaign.
The creative team wanted viewers to laugh at these coping behaviors while also recognizing themselves in them. The commercial could not feel cruel or mocking. It needed warmth underneath the comedy.
Lepore brought exactly that energy.
She even admitted that some of the scenes reflected her own habits and interests. One sequence in the film shows characters binge-watching a dramatic hockey-themed show on a couch. Lepore pushed hard for that joke to stay in the final version because it reflected her own comfort-viewing habits.
That personal connection helped the short feel genuine.
Instead of creating fake “quirky” moments, the team pulled inspiration from real experiences and real stress behaviors people actually have.
Why the Weirdness Works
The campaign’s weird humor is not random.
Every strange little moment reflects something emotional underneath it. People create routines and rituals to calm themselves during stressful times. Some habits are healthy. Some are silly. Some make no sense to anyone else.
But they help.
That is the key message behind the campaign.
Creative director Kevin Weir explained that he personally related to the “burying your face in your cat” moment shown in the short. Sometimes stressful emails or difficult days make people seek small comforting experiences.
The campaign captures those tiny emotional survival strategies.
This honesty gives the film emotional weight even while it stays funny.
The audience is not laughing at the characters. They are laughing because they recognize themselves.
That emotional relatability is probably one reason the campaign has received so much attention online.
Building the Finch World in 3DCG
One of the most impressive parts of the project is the visual design.
Finch already had an established 2D visual identity before this campaign. The creative challenge was figuring out how to turn that world into 3D while keeping its soft, comforting personality intact.
The solution was to create a tactile, fuzzy, cuddly environment.
The 3DCG world feels soft and touchable. Everything has warmth. Even the chaotic scenes still feel cozy somehow.
The team used rounded shapes, soft textures, pastel colors, and simple designs to maintain the charm of the original Finch app.
This balance mattered a lot.
The campaign includes emotionally messy and visually strange situations. If the world itself felt harsh or realistic, the short might have become uncomfortable. Instead, the softness of the environment makes everything feel safe and funny.
The design turns chaos into comfort.
The Small Details Made the World Feel Real
The production team paid close attention to tiny environmental details throughout the film.
Small props and assets helped sell the emotional reality of each scene. These included:
- Ritual circles made from shells and gems
- Cute pink cakes for emotional eating
- Messy household spaces
- Comfort objects
- Soft furniture and cozy textures
- Warm lighting choices
All of these assets were animated in Autodesk Maya.
The environments feel lived-in rather than perfect. That realism helps the emotional humor land more naturally.
Instead of looking like polished advertising sets, the spaces resemble actual homes where stressed people live.
That subtle production design choice supports the campaign’s core message beautifully.
Why Simple Facial Expressions Worked Better
One of the smartest artistic decisions in the campaign was keeping character facial animation simple.
Many animated commercials rely on exaggerated cartoon expressions. But Lepore intentionally avoided going too big or too goofy.
She explained that minimal facial designs often feel more relatable because viewers can project themselves onto the characters more easily.
This approach worked especially well for awkward emotional moments.
A tiny blink.
A blank stare.
A subtle expression.
Sometimes those micro-reactions are funnier than giant cartoon acting.
The famous dryer scene became a great example of this philosophy. The team reportedly adjusted the character’s facial expression several times just to perfect the emotional timing of one tiny moment.
That level of detail shows how carefully the humor was crafted.
The comedy depends on emotional truth, not loud punchlines.
The Giant Kaiju Monster Was the Biggest Challenge
While most characters in the short fit naturally into Finch’s soft visual style, one character caused major creative challenges.
A giant three-eyed kaiju monster appears in the background, destroying buildings during one sequence. The creature has tentacles, multiple eyes, and a very strange design.
Unlike the other characters, this monster also lip-syncs.
That created animation problems.
The team struggled to decide how goofy or threatening the monster should look. Since the creature did not have a traditional mouth, animating dialogue became especially complicated.
Eventually, the solution came from simplicity.
Lepore returned to one of her original rough storyboard sketches and used that as the foundation for the final design. By simplifying the creature instead of over-designing it, the team found the right balance.
The result feels weird, funny, and oddly cute at the same time.
That combination perfectly matches the tone of the entire campaign.
A Musical Format Helped the Humor Land
The campaign is structured as a musical short film rather than a traditional commercial.
That choice gave the project much more personality.
Music helps connect all the strange little scenes together into one emotional experience. Instead of feeling like disconnected jokes, the moments flow together naturally.
The musical structure also makes the campaign feel more cinematic and memorable compared to standard advertising.
Animation and music often work beautifully together because rhythm controls emotional timing. Every awkward habit, strange ritual, and emotional breakdown becomes more entertaining through song and pacing.
The musical format adds energy without losing emotional honesty.
Why the Campaign Feels Different From Typical Advertising
A lot of modern advertising tries very hard to look relatable.
But audiences are smart. They can usually tell when something feels fake or overly calculated.
What makes Whatever It Takes to Get Through the Day stand out is that it genuinely embraces imperfection.
The short does not try to fix people.
It does not tell viewers to become better versions of themselves overnight.
It does not sell impossible lifestyles.
Instead, it quietly says:
“You are doing your best, and sometimes your best looks weird.”
That message feels comforting because it removes pressure.
The campaign understands that emotional survival often looks messy.
That emotional honesty is becoming increasingly valuable in advertising because audiences are exhausted by unrealistic perfection.
The Role of 3DCG in Emotional Storytelling
The project also shows how powerful modern 3DCG animation has become for emotional storytelling.
Years ago, emotionally nuanced animated commercials often relied on stylized 2D animation. But today’s 3DCG tools allow artists to create warmth, softness, and subtle emotional acting in new ways.
This campaign uses 3DCG not for realism, but for emotional texture.
The fuzzy surfaces, warm lighting, soft materials, and minimalist expressions all create comfort. The visuals support the emotional themes instead of distracting from them.
The film proves that 3DCG can feel deeply human when used thoughtfully.
It is not about technical realism. It is about emotional relatability.
Final Thoughts
Finch’s Whatever It Takes to Get Through the Day is more than just a clever animated commercial. It is a reminder that people are messy, emotional, exhausted, weird, and constantly trying to survive modern life in their own ways.
The collaboration between Kirsten Lepore, Mathematic, and Weirwork resulted in a short film that feels both absurd and comforting at the same time.
Its biggest strength is simple: it understands people.
And maybe that honesty is the healthiest message of all.
Source: awn
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Animost – Vietnam 3D Animation Studio
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