I always start with paper and pencil. I like to keep my story boards rough, fluid and loose. When communicating a concept through audio and visuals, it becomes important as a director and an artist to be on the same page. My initial storyboard is what sets the tone, language and look of the entire project.
Composing the music for this animation was a challenge. I wanted to use string instruments and woodwinds, to get an organic feel, while keeping a very steady tempo to not diverge from the fact that we are talking about tech. I composed the music over the course of a month, and produced it in FL Studio. After the animation was completed, I worked on adding the sound effects to the mix.
Here are some of the renders I picked straight out of the AfterEffects project that resemble the original story board, showing how I dissected the idea and visualised it with Illustrator and AfterEffects when compared side by side.
I spent a great deal thinking about the individual aspects of the video, i.e. the animations, script and the background music. In my head I had ideas for each, and I assumed that these would go well with each other. Soon, I discovered, it wasn't as simple. Here are some of my key takeaways from this project:
The absolute best of each thing doesn't necessarily make an awesome final product. Sometimes it is important to tone down on a certain aspect to bring out the other, more important ones. Its important to find the right balance of priority to get your point across.
For explainer videos, the voice-over plays the most important role. Voice-over should be the first thing to be done, so that everything else can be constructed around it.
From the feedback, I realised how easily I could convey the concept of the animation by using simple shapes. Sometimes, it's easy to go all out and "decorate" the animation. However, it's the simple, concrete fundamentals like size, shape, rotation that do most of the talking.
