Behind the scene
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Welcome to Learnfest 2023
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.
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The Project Scope
The Deadline Communications agency got in touch with 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 had provided a detailed mood-board and thorough description of the visuals & key words 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.
Client's moodboards for the Learnfest 2023 Animation
The Creative Process
This year, it was important for the Essex County Council to have an emphasis on 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.
Some unselected style frames
Pre-production
With the style frames refined and approved, we could pursue on developing the full storyboard.
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".
Final Storyboard
The 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 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
“Maïlys is brilliant! Organised, great at scheduling, friendly and adaptable, innovative, and of course, a fantastic animator. All of which is why we've engaged her to work on many of our projects over the past three years, and we keep coming back."
Simon Frith - Deadline Communications
Credits:
Client: Essex County Council
Commissioned by: Deadline Communications,
Project Manager: Simon Frith - Deadline Communications
Illustration and Animation: Maïlys Mï