OPPO
OPPO New Zealand approached us to produce three visually distinct, 15-second animations for social media and tv on demand, that showcase the capabilities of various OPPO products and how they can enhance users' experiences by promoting joy and connectivity.
To achieve this, we conceptualised stories around the messages the client wanted to convey, and crafted storyboards for each animation. We had to ensure they were concise and engaging while adhering to the time constraints of 15 seconds, and that they were optimised for different social media platforms, including horizontal and vertical formats.
Forest Commute
In Forest Commute, we aimed for a textural and hand-drawn style. The characters and setting are familiar yet slightly surreal and dreamlike.
All the artwork was created on an iPad mini, using custom brushes in order to achieve the desired visual. Any uneven shapes and small imperfections add to the type of art style we were aiming for.
To further emphasize the hand-drawn style, the animation was produced at 12fps.
Storyboard
Style frame development
Character designs
Duet
Duet has a playful and humorous narrative, which is conveyed through the use of flat graphics and geometric shapes for the character designs and environments.
The minimal background imagery allows the audience to focus on the characters and their devices.
We spent quite a bit of time on the colour schemes, ensuring a balance between soft tones and creating enough contrast to make the animation stand out.
Storyboard
Character designs
Colour exploration
The Chase
The Chase is a 'feel good' story, with which we created the opportunity to play with a few different illustration and animation techniques.
We wanted to explore a mixture of graphic and hand drawn art styles, as well as incorporating patterns and bold line-work into the imagery. We played with the idea of animating textures or keeping them static within masked shapes, opting for the latter.
The environments were created mainly as flat colours, using lines as textures to add detail and interest. The colours chosen were softer than in the previous animations to match the story's tone of voice.
Storyboard
Dog character designs
Human character designs
We had a fantastic time creating these animations for OPPO.
The challenge of creating 3 animations in completely different visual styles gave us a wonderful opportunity to explore different illustration and animation techniques, and to simply play.
We were able to refine our process for creating each animation from scratch, and in their necessary formats - from ideation and storyboarding, to style research and art creation, rigging, animation and audio - coming up with a production pipeline which was efficient and well established by the end of the project.
Credits
Client: OPPO
Creative Direction: Shannon Jahnel Lanktree
Artwork: David Way, Shannon Jahnel Lanktree, Sam Bunny
Animation: Shannon Jahnel Lanktree, Meng Hong Yong
Audio: Andrew Denison