Best Phones Forever
Blast off into the BPF Cinematic Universe
Year:
2023-2024
Category:
CGI
Design
Animation
Tools:
C4D
Houdini
Zbrush
Redshift
Substance Painter
Adobe CC
Brief
The Mill Design Studio partnered with Google on their innovative global campaign, titled “Best Phones Forever,” showcasing a distinctive and playful bond of two very recognizable smartphones, the Pixel and iPhone.
Process
From art direction, design and build of environments, compositing, matte painting and colour, The Mill brought together select capabilities to serve as an extension of Google’s in-house team across 15 (and counting) hero spots. The series has gone viral garnering 200M+ views on YouTube it has also forged an ongoing partnership between The Mill and Google Creative Lab.
BTS
Having multiple spots for this campaign allowed us to refine our workflow with each iteration. By the end, our pipeline was running like a well-oiled machine. We developed custom tools to enhance efficiency, including a Light Rig designed to illuminate the phones in an idealized way as they animated and an X-Ref workflow for scene construction, enabling flexibility when working with shared assets and sets across shots.
Credits
Creative Director: Mike Schaeffer
Executive Producer: Katie Tricot
Producer: Dara Ó Cairbre
Business Development Manager: Elise Ford
Assistant Producer: Claire Stiefel
Art Director: James Van Den Elshout, Austin Marola, Anthony Palermo
Designers: Eddie Livingstone, Chris Szeto, Daniel Whitaker, James Gardner, Alvaro Pastor, Lucas Barbuzzi, Akshay Tiwari, Zach Landua, Tyler Scheitlin
Matte Painting: Charles Lee
Finish Artist: Taylor Feld
Colour
Colourist: Ashley Woods
Executive Producer, Colour: Alexandra Lubrano
Colour Producer: Kenya Agunloye
Colour Assist: Amonnie Nicolas
In collaboration with: Google Creative Lab
Copyright
© 2026 EWL Motion
All Rights Reserved
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