It's Your Turn
Social AR Experience
My Hero Academia thrusts viewers into a world of superheroes, where professionals guide hero students until it’s their turn to protect the world. This trio of AR effects gave fans three different ways to harness the varied powers of the film’s most popular student heroes—mimicking the characters’ in-universe actions through UX interaction.
-
Thomas Roach
Art Direction, 2D Animation, Visual Effects, DevelopmentAndrea Roepke
Account Manager
Project Demo
Opportunity
To celebrate the launch of the new movie, My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising, we had an opportunity to invite fans of the series to learn how to use their superpowers and carry the torch—just like their favorite characters.
Challenge
Unlike previous AR executions, Toho Animation did not allow us to let fans embody the characters themselves, impacting static shareability and limiting us to only showcasing their animated superpowers.
Furthermore, fans of My Hero Academia identify with a cast of heroes that each have wildly different abilities.
Strategy
By selecting a diverse group from among the film’s most popular student heroes, this trio of AR effects gave fans three different ways to harness their favorite superpowers. To ensure an authentic experience that also complied with Toho's character restrictions, we painstakingly recreated the original 2D animated effects and mimicked the characters’ in-universe mannerisms through UX interaction.
In addition, by featuring videos of popular voice actors from the series using these filters across multiple social platforms, we inspired fans to broadcast their enthusiasm and get creative with the animated effects.
Results
Racking up nearly 600k impressions in the first week alone, this campaign helped propel the film into opening at #1 domestically and more than doubled the previous film’s domestic gross of $5.8 million, reaching $13.3 million in the US before being cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic.