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Petbarn deleted its social feed and, in July, handed it to two mascots, Petey the dog and Barnadette the cat. Howatson+Company made them the start of a brand world for the Australian pet retailer, and the first post reached 6 million people.
They're CGI with a stop-motion look. Animators drew the performances as simple 2D lines, and the AI rendered them.
Where AI sat: Designed to become the most-loved retail brand characters in the country, Petey and Barnadette were created with CGI to achieve a stop-motion aesthetic, and an AI workflow to create repeatable executions. — LBB
We have a loved brand, and deeply recognisable characters. So we’ve built on that equity by creating the world we all imagine our pets live in.
Today in Creative AI
Kling AI made the full Kling 4.0 available to everyone on October 15, after the Flash early access we covered on October 6. It makes 3- to 30-second clips at up to 4K from text, images, keyframes and up to 15 references.
Kling says a glance or a moment of hesitation now reads clearly on screen, and that lip sync is more accurate. Its 10-bit HDR is still listed as coming soon.
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The Read
Kling says 4.0 now carries a glance or a moment of hesitation. Meates says moves like Petey's ears dropping are hard to get from AI, so Howatson's animators drew them and the AI only rendered.
Until a model proves Kling's claim on a real brief, Howatson's split is the one to copy.
For brands: Cast the performance as you would for a shoot. Petbarn's came from comedians in the booth and animators' line drawings, and AI did the last step.
For agencies: Propose the team with the work. Howatson's production chief, Holly Alexander, built an in-house crew for Petbarn with skills agencies rarely have.
Tool Review → Kittl
Kittl is a design editor with templates, mockups and AI image and video models, Kling Video 3.0 and Veo 3.1 among them. Pro is $14 a month billed annually or $19 monthly for 2,000 AI tokens, up to 400 images by Kittl's count.
It turns approved character art like Petbarn's into posts, posters, mockups and merch. The limits: unused tokens don't roll over, and Kling 4.0 isn't on its model list today.
Worth it if your team makes lots of branded stills and short video. Skip it if your designers live in Illustrator.
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