Welcome to Learnfest
Project breakdown
The Essex County Council in United Kingdom were preparing to host their annual learning festival, LearnFest.
They needed an engaging animation to play during the event, to introduce their courses and activities.
Project Scope
The Deadline Communications agency approached me to help them create this motion animation for the Essex County Council.
We didn’t receive a script for the animation, but the client provided a detailed mood board (see below) and a thorough description of the visuals & keywords that they wanted to see in the animation.
We also knew it needed to be around 45 seconds long, and display group of people from various backgrounds, to translate how the festival was an inclusive place where one can build a community.
The Creative Process
This year, it was important for the Essex County Council to emphasise new technologies, and they had the idea of a spaceship travelling through space to the Festival. My objective was to give the viewer a sense of travelling along with the spaceship crew, whilst being introduced to the festival’s various themes, and I would design the storyboard around that storytelling approach. Below are some styleframes that didn’t make the cut!
Pre-production
With the style frames refined and approved, we could continue with the storyboard development.
The general storyline would be that a robot mascot would lead the viewer into the LearnFest spaceship, where we would get to know the festival’s themes. Once presented, we would reveal that many other spaceships are also joining the festival, represented at “Planet LearnFest”.
Below is the final storyboard!
Animation production
Once the storyboard was approved, I could jump into production. I usually start this stage by building up my characters’ rigs inside After Effects, and you’ll see just below a recording of our little robot’s rig. Once all the characters are nicely rigged, I follow up by doing a general pacing of my frames to the music. This then serves as a guide for the rest of the animation as I go back to each frame to animate them in detail.
Character rigging with Joystic n’ Sliders
Credits
Client: Essex County Council
Commissioned by: Deadline Communications
Producer: Deadline Communications – Simon Frith
Script: Deadline Communications
Project Coordination & Management: Simon Frith
Creative Direction, Storyboard & Animation: Maïlys Mï
Sound Design: Louis Gaston