Addy's
An animated film about the brutal, beautiful creative process. Explore Tenet's opening film for the 2023 Addys—a story every creative knows by heart.
(YEAR)
2025
(TIMELINE)
2 Months
(SERVICES)
Title Sequence
Character Animation
Our task was to create an opening film for a room full of the most discerning—and cynical—critics in the world: our peers. The central challenges were:
Telling Our Own Story: How do you tell the story of the creative struggle in a way that feels authentic and profound, without resorting to clichés that creatives would see right through?
Visualizing the Intangible: How do you give physical form to the most abstract feelings in our industry—the dread of the blank page, the electricity of an idea, and the terror of judgment?
An Unconventional Hero: How do you create a protagonist out of simple contour wire who could carry the entire emotional weight of this universal journey?
This project was born from a feeling we all know. This was the original text from our pitch deck that started it all:
“The struggle between inspiration and execution has always been one of the most trying and difficult relationships a creative has to endure. The Searching. The Pause. The Impending Sense of Dread, failure, or worse, success. To be understood through a medium using light, form, and an invisible force to sell, promote, and disseminate an abstraction. A feeling. Reaching out for a connection if only for a fleeting moment. The search. The Discovery. The inception. The Rise. And the Fall. And with a little bit of luck, you might just land in the clouds.”
We knew this story had to be honest. We concepted, wrote, and directed the entire film, building a visual metaphor that every creative in the audience would recognize as their own.
Concept & Symbolic Design: We designed the lone creative as a universal wire-frame avatar, tangled in a web of his own doubt. The "Idea" became a single, brilliant spark of light—a simple, powerful goal to break free and pursue.
A Narrative Arc of the Craft: We mapped his entire journey: from the dark cave of isolation, to the workshop where he gives his abstract idea tangible form, to the moment he releases it into the world for judgment.
From Judgment to Triumph: The film culminates in the final, terrifying moment of judgment before a jury of his peers. We built this scene to capture that universal fear, making his ultimate validation—being lifted into the clouds—a powerful, emotional payoff for the entire room.
The final film opened the 2023 Addy Awards to an audience of the very people whose struggle it depicted. The result was a profound, shared moment of recognition.
An opening film that was met with heartfelt applause, successfully capturing the universal truth of the creative industry.
A powerful and honest tribute to the difficult, often lonely, process of making great work.
A piece that stands as a testament to our belief that the most powerful stories are the ones we all know by heart.
