MOTOR DRIVE, a company that aims to bring electric vehicles to the masses, offers subscription ownerships of EV cars. They have an app that they wanted to promote and create several animated advertisements to show on YouTube and their other social media channels. Each ad would have a different focus, so the first one was to help explain what Motor Drive is.
BRAND DEVELOPMENT
I worked with the social media marketer to make sure I had all their branding guidelines, including colors and fonts. But, also more importantly, could look at screenshots of the app and see how the UI (user interface) was designed so that I could implement these into my design frames.
STORYBOARD ITERATIONS
Based on the research and development begun in the previous step, I put together storyboard drafts. Because this ad would have no voiceover, it was important to show detailed descriptions of the action on screen and show the timing for how long each frame would be on screen so that the text would be readable.
DEVELOPING THE TIMING WITH MUSIC
Once we finalized the artwork and transitions in the storyboard, the next step was doing an animatic. The client provided a music track to use, so this was the first step where we saw how picture and sound worked together. Even without animation, it was important to see how the timing worked and if the music was a good fit. Luckily, it was!
TIMING FOR READING
With no voiceover needed to record, we could jump right into the animation process. With the music licensed, I could cut the track perfectly to fit the images. I imported all the graphic assets, and played around with making the ad fun and enjoyable to watch. However, once I was done the first draft, I realized this couldn’t be a ;10 ad, as there wasn’t enough time to read the text on screen. So, it was now going to be a :20 ad! Fortunately, there was plenty of time in the music track to make the adjustment. I enjoyed adding the dirty clouds of smog coming from the cars using the plug-in Nimble Nimbus. I also struggled at first with making the phone turn to the side all while keeping it 2d. But, with a little massaging of the morphed paths and masks, I was able to make it appear like the car was coming out of the phone as it was turning.
Comments