We’ve just completed yet another of our amazing Whiteboard Animation videos!
Home Build Help are a company that provide expert advice and personal consultancy services to assist with home projects. They needed a company video to show new customers exactly what they do, how they do it and why they are good at what they do. (more…)
Client: The University of Manchester. Motion Graphics Project
The University of Manchester, High Voltage Technology department recently commissioned our motion graphics team to add animation into a power systems video for student training. (more…)
Motion graphics can be a great way of communicating your company message to your audience. It’s particularly useful to businesses that perhaps don’t have physical products or processes to shoot and so a traditional filmed video wouldn’t achieve the right result.
When Liverpool based gravure printing company, Prinovis asked us to design and produce another motion graphics video, we jumped at the chance. This motion graphics video was planned for reveal at an upcoming exhibition: The In-Store Marketing Show, London.
In most cases, videos containing motion graphic design are an excellent way to deliver a message, whilst maintaining the engaging and diverse qualities that video provides. They can be extremely powerful when combined with video footage and can used to create rich multimedia training videos, or videos with a lot of information.
Motion graphics works really well with text and information heavy content, as it allows you to tell a story through moving graphics, animation and kinetic typography. Some content can often be over-whelming when delivered via narration or flat diagrams/imagery.
Combining visual animation, graphics and sound in this way provides an overall much more engaging experience, resulting in greater retention of information.
Our brief was to produce a 2.5 minute video which would support the company’s new campaign; ‘Bringing the Customer Journey to Life’. Prinovis requested that this motion graphic design project was to be in a similar style to the first video we did for them, but with a different story.
In this project our remit was to focus on the relationship between print and mobile phone couponing. Our client wanted to show their print customers such as Argos, who invest heavily in the Argos catalogue, that they can also bolster the customer consumer experience by providing multichannel touch points, via the use of the Prinovis mobile phone coupons.
To make the connection between print and digital we opted to design the final motion graphics video around the look and feel of a digital catalogue. The pages of the catalogue would then contain all of the relevant information that Prinovis wanted to deliver, in an animated form.
Our intention was to bring the catalogue pages to life and provide the viewer with unique imagery that would catch their attention. Our animated catalogue was positioned on a coffee table in the digital scene. We proceeded to introduce additional items that would normally be found around the home.
We utilised typical ‘real world’ objects normally found offline to give the video a much more realistic feel, bridging the gap and helping viewers to make the connection between the familiar physical catalogue and a digital form.
Our in-house graphic design and video production teams worked closely on this campaign.
This is the 2nd project which we have recently undertaken for Prinovis and was part of a wider marketing campaign of work, which included a 28 page booklet, done in a magazine design style and an exhibition back wall design.
If you would like to discuss how motion graphics could help your promotions then please get in touch!
The Background to the Campaign
Prinovis UK Ltd is a leading gravure print group with its head offices in Germany.
Studiowide was commissioned – alongside our motion graphics work which we also recently completed as part of the same project for Prinovis – to come up with an exhibition stand design concept for a 6 metre back wall area.
The back wall design, including podium, was for the Prinovis stand at the upcoming Retail Business Technology Trade show, where the company launched their new mobile couponing retail system.
The original brief requested for the 6 meter stand to be divided into 3 x 2 metre areas, with each section focussing on a particular market. From our evaluation of the original brief, and as a consequence of our feedback, the client re-evaluated their requirements to a more suitable design which maximised the stand in the best way possible.
The Challenge
Our task was to construct a visual piece that was intriguing to exhibitions goers. The challenge was to be informative to a point, whilst also not revealing too much information. By doing this we would take away any pre-conceived ideas regarding mobile phone marketing and encourage stand visitors to speak with the staff on the stand in order to find out more.
This project was to help launch the Prinovis UK Mobile Couponing scheme. The finished size of the design was 2 metres x 6 metres and the target audience were representatives from a wide variety of retail sectors.
A further challenge was to create a message that was not just directed at users of Smart phones, but those with older generation ‘dumb’ phones. As for phone diversity, we also needed to convey that the Mobile Couponing scheme would drive footfall and sales, and not to confuse the idea with that of a mobile phone advertisement.
Another important consideration was to ensure that the Exhibition stand design was consistent with the Prinovis corporate branding. In addition, the design had to share other style elements and vector illustrations used in our previous Prinovis motion graphics project.
Finally, our client wanted us to create an exhibition environment which stood out from other ‘similar’ product offers at the show. Above all, our exhibition stand design had to inspire people to approach the stand for further information.
The Solution
After much research and planning we came to the conclusion to use illustrated, silhouetted people, forming a queue to a generic cashier desk. The queue was to represent the demand of the couponing scheme.
Next to the queue of people we proposed to place two over exaggerated generic phones; a Smart phone and a ‘dumb’ phone. The background would also contain building outlines hinting of a city centre high street; this was to give a sense of environment to the design.
The people in the queue would also own, and have in their hand, either a Smart phone or a ‘dumb’ phone to represent the phone diversity of the queue. The Prinovis colours, blue and turquoise were also used as a design tactic to differentiate users and phones.
The Results
The tagline ‘Increase Loyalty -Drive Footfall – Develop Your Customer Database’ was added to provide a clear message, directed at the retail store representatives, alerting them to the fact that Mobile couponing could increase the sales of their retail outlets.
In addition to the exhibition stand design, the Prinovis motion graphics video was also showcasing on a television screen and tablet. Although the design concept looks generally quite straight forward, the narrative is quite complex which gives a charming contrast to the overall project. Both projects were created within the same timescale.
Studiowide graphic design team and animation team collaborated in order to ensure these projects remained consistent. Working closely with the client via group meetings, phone calls and email, ensured the project was completed, printed and ready for the trade show on schedule.
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We’ve just signed off another motion graphics project! This piece was for Prinovis, a leading gravure print group with its head offices in Germany. Studiowide was commissioned by the Liverpool division of Prinovis, located in Speke.
The company is actually one of the largest printing plants in the UK, covering 500,000 sq. ft.!!! and have launched a new mobile couponing service at the retail business technology trade show in London. Prinovis required a motion graphics video to play on the stand and inform prospective customers of their products, including features, benefits and the competitive advantage.
We were asked to plan and produce a three minute motion graphics, animated project to be displayed at the exhibition show. Whilst three minutes might not seem like that much, in animation, it’s quite a lot! Imagine getting a pad of A4 paper; say the pad has 200 pages, if each page is a frame, and the standard frame rate for video is 25 frames per second. If you were to draw an animated stick figure in the corner of every page in the pad, and then flick through it; that’d be only 8 seconds worth of animation. So this video was the equivalent of a flick book animation, it’d take 22, 200 paged pads, and 4,400 pages of drawing. Nice little analogy for you there.
The challenge with this video wasn’t predominantly the length but the fact that all of the information had to be delivered visually – the hustle and bustle of the show would drown out any narration the video had. This meant that we had to be smart in the way that we presented the information and facts. The whole content had to be engaging and exciting, and hold the viewer’s attention.
We decided to take the style of video down the infographics route. This means that all data, facts and figures were represented graphically – this style is perfect for this project due to the fact that the show meant NO sound.
Using infographics in a motion graphics piece is very exciting, much more so than the typical standard PowerPoint style bullets – ‘death by power point’ would not do the trick in this case; it had to be more engaging.
For example; in one composition we use a stack of mobile phones to the left of the screen representing mobile couponing, then on the right hand side of the screen a single paper coupon would flutter in and land on the floor, representing the fact that the paper coupon is ten times effective than mobile phone coupons.
In most of the animated sequences we also inserted text captions to re-enforce a particular message. It takes a lot of lateral thinking in this style of motion graphics. This is key to effectively represent the information in an engaging and concise manner.
Prinovis had tonne of information they wanted to get across in the video; this proved a tricky balancing act, fitting it all in whilst remaining engaging and interesting. However, with a bit of clever animation and motion graphics techniques it wasn’t too difficult. Overall, the motion graphics video met all of the objectives required by Prinovis for the video to be displayed at the show.
Not only was the video to be used at the show, but also on the Prinovis’ website. Visitors to the site will be able to watch the video and come away suitably informed about Prinovis’ mobile couponing and what it involves.
If you’re interested in having your own motion graphics video produced by us, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
By Danny Piercy
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Last week we were approached by personal injury solicitors Lamb & Co based in Wirral. The company commissioned us to produce a piece of animation, showing their support for Liverpool FC in the Carling Cup. The animated piece is to be displayed on the Liverpool Media Wall located right opposite Liverpool Lime Street train station – meaning thousands of people will feast their eyes upon it each day. The Liverpool Media Wall is Europe’s largest commercial LED screen, measuring a mohassive 30 meters wide and 7 meters tall (almost as big as the TV in my lounge).
Lamb & Co came to us on a Thursday and they needed the project to be completed for Friday, to go live the following Monday. This meant us having to shuffle around some of our other projects to make sure we had the time to finish this, whilst making sure we didn’t fall behind with any of our other work.
The majority of the work was done in Adobe After Effects, producing the animation and laying out the advert. The first thing I noticed when starting this project was the insane resolution of the screen, it was super wiiiiiiide screen. This meant that the layout couldn’t follow the conventional style used on TV, Web and Print. The advert was to last 10 seconds, too; whilst this doesn’t sound like a lot, 10 seconds of animation can take a while to do, as the animation has to be done frame by frame – if you take into consideration there are 25 frames per second in the average video, that’s a lot of animation!
There was quite a lot to fit into the 10 seconds, so I had to be careful with how I animated it, paying close attention to the complexity and timing. Obviously with this work being displayed on the big screen, people won’t be up close to it and will probably be looking at it is they’re walking by. Therefore complex and intricate animating wasn’t justified on this project as it wouldn’t be clear and could potentially look messy. At the same time I also had to make sure that it was engaging and would grab people’s attention and hold it for the duration of the advert.
The advert had stationary information on the right hand side that would display the contact information and relevant company information. The left side of the advert was where all the action takes place. As the ‘Lamb & Co’ logo is a sheep, the main animation involved a team of red sheep (obviously Liverpool, duh!) passing the ball to each other and then scoring a goal. At which point the crowd cheer ‘raising the baaaa for all things personal injury’. See what we did there… get it? They’re sheep, they say baaa, that thing along the top of the goal is also the baaaaar… it’s a pun. Funny, eh?
The animation will be on a loop amongst other adverts from companies such as Blackberry, Sky and Stella Artois and will get a total of 1,440 plays a day, that’s 10,080 plays in the week. Our work will be up from 20th February until the 26th February 2012. Don’t hang aBAAAAAAt, go check it out!
Expect pictures and video in the next few days!
By Daniel Piercy
The past couple of days have been spent filming and editing our motion graphics to use as a promotional video for our homepage. We created our motion graphics promotional video mainly for visitors to our website so they can watch a video and get a better understanding of the services that we offer and what we can do.
The video briefly shows examples of the work that we do in Liverpool from each of the different areas that we specialise in; these are chartered marketing, graphic design, web design & development, video production and photography. The video runs for a total of 3 minutes, showing off each area for roughly 30 seconds. It’s comprised of a mixture of motion graphics and video footage to give it a real quirky look.
Hang on, what’s motion graphics!? Well, it’s exactly how it sounds; you take graphics and introduce motion and animation. Think of it as a billboard or an advert on a page in a magazine, but it’s animated; the text, photographs and graphics are all able to move around.
Before we could get to the fun part though, we had to story board and plan how the video was going to play and what was going to happen in each scene. It’s important to do this so that when you come to doing the actual filming, you don’t end up standing around like a lemon wasting time trying to figure out what you’re going to film.
Once all the planning was completed it was time to start the filming and motion graphics. There were also a few photographs in the video; so we filmed this in our studio which was perfect to capture the set-up of studio lights and backdrop. These photographs played a big role in the final video as they were going to be the background for the motion graphics, so we had to make sure they were placed exactly how we wanted them when shooting the footage in order to tie in the ‘real word’ to the motion graphics. After having taken the photographs, they were put into Adobe Photoshop CS5 and tweaked to get the desired look we were after.
They were then ready to become part of the motion graphics; to do this we use Adobe After Effects CS5. We then spent a few hours combining the photographs with graphics (all made by us of course!), adding animation and sound effects to get the motion graphics ready to be dropped into the final video.
At first it was a little difficult to get it looking just right as I had to try and make a seamless transition between real footage and a photograph. However, after a little while of being hung-up we managed to get it looking right. It was then plain sailing as we were able to apply the same techniques and principles to the other clips to get them looking perfect.
Alongside the motion graphics there is actual video, which we had to film with an actual video camera, surprising I know. However, rather than just straight up video, we were going to motion track some of the motion graphics into the real footage to give it a whole new depth and look, very similar to the effects used in the film ‘Zombie Land’. When you require this type of effect you have to film with the motion tracking in mind; you have to compose the shot differently and watch the way that you move the camera around, you can’t just decide to add it in as an after-thought into any old footage.
Combing the photographs, motion graphics, real footage, motion tracking and finally music, we feel gave us a real nice vibe to the video which we think represents us and the way that we work. Once the video was complete it was ready to hit the net and win us some Oscars. Having a promotional video to represent you or your company is great; you’re able to let people know what you’re all about without them having to read through pages of text. Read loads of text, or watch a video? Bit of a no-brainer really. Not only does it let people know what you do, it’s also a way of letting people see what you do, if they can see it, they’ll understand it better, which in turn is more likely to help your business as people aren’t going to buy something they don’t understand.
So, what are you waiting for, stop reading this and watch the video!
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