With hand-drawn characters and scenes, I’ve created multiple 2D animated videos as well as slick motion graphics for standard videos.
For my undergraduate final project I chose to specialise in Business and started up Phoenix Creative, a media production business making digital media services more accessible to smaller businesses and the general public.
I wanted to bring the power of the media into the hands of the people and make the digital life simple and enjoyable for all.
One major aspect of the business was the idea to convert old media files to current systems, keeping them safe and secure and in the best quality they could possibly be.
With the business targeted at lower-end clients and the general public, it felt necessary to keep the branding professional but not too corporate so that potential clients could feel comfortable and at ease.
The two key forces behind this project were driven by personal desires for high quality design and streamlining the digital experience. I am constantly analysing media content from other businesses, both big and small, and wondering what I might do differently.
Having moved away from family and friends, it became apparent to me how important it is to keep old photos and videos backed up, restored and made more easily accessible before they got lost, damaged or deleted.
The unique selling point of the business was subtle but key, and so required a clear and simple explainer video to detail exactly what the business was offering. Because the business had multiple different potential audiences, it needed to give examples of who these services are for and what kind of product they could expect.
I ensured the script began by showing the progression of storytelling through the use of imagery, which would lead on to reveal why images are still important today and how we can use old photos with modern techniques.
As part of the colloquial style of the Phoenix Creative brand, I’d used a custom hand-written font that I’d designed previously. I also designed the characters and artwork in Adobe Animate and Illustrator, which were then animated in After Effects. The characters were rigged together using a plugin called Duik, which enabled puppin pinning within After Effects. I used the rigs to animate the body postures and hand gestures as well as synchronising the different drawings of the mouth up to the voiceovers, frame by frame.