My final project for the Motion Design for Advertising Course, involved collaboration with a real client. I had the opportunity to work with CODEPATH out of the three clients available to each student, which was exciting since it was my first time working on an abstract brief.
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Media Encoder
THE BRAND
CodePath is a non-profit organization that actively works to set students up for career success by building employer partnerships and providing access to internships as well as ensuring that their programs are up to date with programming trends. Their focus is on removing barriers for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, first-generation, and low-income students. They want help promoting their mentorship program to encourage volunteers (professionals working in tech) to sign up as mentors.
The brand tone is knowledgeable, professional but caring, encouraging, and informative.
THE TASK
Create an animated 15 second post for social media, with, optionally, sound design and an animated logo.
This also required the following:
- Come up with several potential ideas for a story to tell - Select the best idea - Use the provided copy
- Storyboard the social media post and logo animation - Create necessary assets - Create animations
THE GOAL
To catch the attention of fast-scrolling social media users to sign up to mentor CodePath students.
Copy: “It’s your turn to elevate the next gen in tech” Or “Elevate the next gen in tech” Or “Be the Mentor you needed”
Call to action: “Become a CodePath Mentor” Or “Sign Up Today”
CONCEPTION
What was my brilliant last idea? I had three ideas, but I decided to stick with the second one because it precisely matched the brief's objective. Though I chose "Be the mentor you needed" as my final copy, elevate from the other copies was my major cue. I looked up elevate right away and found promote, pull up, boost, upgrade, raise, grant a higher rank, give advancement, and improve position/status of. The latter two were the ones that gave me the idea. I jumped online and searched Pinterest using the terms advance and enhance position. I found some amazing references but I wasn't satisfied, so I started doing more research. I looked around me for more ideas, and the lovely one of employing THE STAIRS and an ACCESS DOOR came to me.
The idea was that different colored tiny balls would bounce into the frame while ascending the steps at different pace. When they get at the door, they are unsure of what to do. They try to get through the door by banging on it, which prompts them to use more force, which causes one of the balls to fly off. The larger green ball, which represents Codepath mentors, shows up at this moment to save the day in order to relieve all the stress and provide open access. It ascends the stairs before leaping up to open the door for the bumbling balls.
The ultimate objective of Codepath is to remove barriers for these targeted students (Black, Latinx, Indigenous, first-generation, and low-income). The only barrier the tiny colored balls faced was the door that led to the subsequent level, and this was readily overcome by Codepath (the bigger green ball).
MOODBOARD
I used an image from Codepath's Instagram that fit the style for my moodboard. Additionally, they used more of the white backgrounds and strokes that I used in the finished product. I eventually discovered some images through basic keyword online searches and on Pinterest, which was based on the approach I chose to take for the animation project.
STORYBOARD
I drew up these frames and this was the final visual story I came up with
ANIMATICS
One of the challenges I faced was determining the weight of each ball, which would affect the elasticity and sound design. It was tricky, I rolled my sleeves up to get in some physics. I was finally able to get this right by working on my animatics.
I have done animatics before but this project made me realise how powerful animatics can be. It made my workflow easier and effective as well, because I created most of the project assets up front instead of on the go. All I needed was to animate! Once done animating I moved to Premiere Pro to finish off the sound design.