Custom Marketing Animation Projects

How animation can help with your marketing tactics

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Creating a Custom Animation Project:

A conversation with Pierce Andrea.

Ever wonder what goes into making custom animations? Curious how working with pros can help bring your business animation to life? Here’s a quick discussion with Pierce Andrea, a talented animator and an experienced visual artist.

Work process.

How do you storyboard an animation initially in your head? What’s your process in taking a concept (or a client’s direction) and making it into an animation? Can you walk us through the creation timeline?
To be honest, I feel like the way I plan out my creations as a 3D artist is way different from lots of other artists and designers around me. I see a lot of other people in the field draw pages upon pages of concepts and storyboards. I never seem to have time for that, so as juvenile as it might sound, a lot of my idea creations come with me playing with the things around me. Want to figure out how that bottle will spin into that frame for that ad? Get at it like a kid shamelessly playing with a toy car! Pick up that bottle and twirl it around with your own two hands and see what looks best!

There are other instances though. For example, when I have a voiceover I need to make graphics for, I always markup the script with different numbered sections to which I describe different scenes, props and actions I’d like on screen. In cases where I have a lot of time I’ll make big pages lined with character designs, scenes, etc, all for one big, saturated page of creativity!
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Defining Animation Success

What determines success? What makes a successful animation? What does a successful one accomplish?
A lot of people struggle with the question of what success means to them, but to be honest I find it very easy. What determines success in my creations and animations is the reaction among the people who see it. Do they smile? Do they laugh? Maybe are they hooked despite you expecting them to have better things to do? All these queries are the perfect indicator of if you did the job right, if you made it look good and if you communicated the message properly. In short, a smile or a great reaction is the best gift an animator or designer can get!
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Outsourcing vs. Local

What do you think of using Fiverr for animations? How is your approach different?

As for outsourcing like Fiverr, I will admit there is a time and place for it in some cases, while in others I believe that a company is actually incomplete without an on-site, company-hired animator/ graphic designer. When a lot of small businesses are starting up, all the connections and bridges that define a successful company haven’t exactly been formed yet. For this reason, you can’t really expect the company to have any connections with the local graphics freelancers who get the area, it’s feel, and value the artist/ client relationship more than an outsider like on Fiverr would. That’s perfectly okay in the beginning, though as things continue to progress, a business should start looking for someone in the area. This widens possibilities from just simple graphics with stock image photos, to people who can come in to take photos, videos and more and incorporate them into their graphics, creating a much more personal feel in the advertising and designs. Once a company’s worked with numerous local graphics companies and contractors and become a very large scale business, Fiverr should be completely out of the question. It’s time to hire either a person, or a team of people who understand the company and can be relied on to fill the company’s animation/ advertising needs with full dependability.

Challenges

What issues sometimes come up, and how do you address those?
I will say that the biggest issue that comes up commonly is not knowing how to do something right off the bat. Sure, before I worked for JAM Graphics my knowledge of 3D animation and motion graphics was very in depth. However, I will say that in many cases at JAM Graphics, it wasn’t enough. Needless to say, my experience in JAM Graphics taught me the importance of on the job learning/ experience. While working for companies and clients, you get requests for designs from people who are not you. With that, these requests come from a background and way of thinking that is also not you. So, to get the job done you always have to think in new ways that you never really would on your own. It’s one of those kinds of things you can’t prepare for on your own. If you want to know what kind of things you’re going to have to make in the field, you can’t hide from working in it. You’ve got to step in and learn as you go.

More About Pierce

How did you learn this skill? How’d you get into this?
While most people usually start out with a tutorial, or some kind of college degree to get into the animation/ artistic/ creative field, I actually started out with a much more humble beginning. When I was younger, I used to play with these big wooden blocks called Tumble Blocks, which were essentially an oversized version of Jenga blocks. Back then, I used to stack these blocks, create large buildings and more, all with the intent of knocking them down. Far later in my life when the blocks had long been put away, I was browsing Youtube when I found a video of those same exact blocks assembled into massive towers and toppling down from huge heights. Determined to connect with my inner child again, I installed the software used to make the tower animation. However, once the program was installed on my computer, I realised that the interface was no type of child’s play. I’d just installed a professional grade 3D software named Blender. From that point, the rest is history!