Case Study | Discovery Centre Stay Curious

Stay Curious

discovery centre

Curiosity is the engine of discovery.

• Storyboarding • Illustration & Design • Art Direction • Voice Casting & Recording • 3D Modelling & Animation • Texturing & Lighting • Custom Music Score • Sound Design • Audio Mix

The Discovery Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia was getting set to reopen in a new location, featuring brand new state of the art design and exhibits. We were tasked by M5 Marketing Communications to bring their script to life and create an emotional and inspiring video to kick off the grand opening. This award winning cinematic animation is the result of those early discussions.

For over 30 years, The Discovery Centre has inspired youth across Nova Scotia to learn about the world around them. When they moved into a brand-new facility, the challenge was clear: how do you tell Nova Scotians the Discovery Centre is back and better than ever, in a way that excites both kids and adults?

The agency’s idea was simple and clever: awaken curiosity. At the heart of this was Jack, a boy whose best friend is his eyebrow. With every question Jack asks, his eyebrow rises with him. But as Jack gets older and less curious, his eyebrow takes off to explore the world on its own.

At Accomplice Content, we were tasked with bringing Jack and his eyebrow to life. From the earliest colour boards and character designs, we built Jack and his world entirely in 3D space. But this wasn’t about a polished CG look. The intention was to make the animation feel hand-drawn and tactile, as if it had been painted frame by frame. We textured Jack’s world with illustrated backgrounds and layered in painterly details that gave the story warmth and charm, keeping it approachable for kids while still resonating with adults.

This crafted style carried across sixty and thirty second broadcast spots, online placements, and social media where audiences could follow the eyebrow’s adventures. Because the environments and characters were built in 3D, the assets were also adaptable beyond the screen, appearing in installations inside the Discovery Centre and even in a published children’s book.

The campaign reached nearly one hundred and thirty thousand views, generated almost six thousand social engagements, and most importantly, helped the Discovery Centre double membership sales and welcome forty thousand visitors in just six weeks, half of their total visitation from the year before.

For us, it was about more than animation. It was about using craft to transform a playful idea into a tactile, multi-platform story world, and in the process, helping a boy and his eyebrow reunite while sparking curiosity in Nova Scotians young and old.