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American Advertising Federation
Sunset Transportation is a leading third party logistics (3PL) company based in St. Louis, MO that develops custom shipping solutions for businesses across numerous industries. Their company culture is full of energy and very team driven. Sunset places strong focus on real human interactions, which creates a positive and refreshing customer experience, especially in an industry that can be rather stiff and impersonal.
CHALLENGE
Develop Sunset's first company video to help increase visibility and communicate their brand philosophy. Maintain alignment with current marketing strategies: witty, professional, out of the box. Highlight the brand personality without getting bogged down with the details of each individual service offering.
SOLUTION
A 2 minute animated explainer video for their website: an introduction to Sunset and their "5 Promises. The goal was to make logistics less intimidating. An added touch of humor helped imbue the video with a casual, approachable feeling. In the end, we created a simplified message with a contemporary flair.
Plan of attack
Before moving into production we kicked things off with a deep dive into the logistics business. Over a one-day facilitated discovery session, I worked with the great people at Sunset to surface challenges the organization faced. In the process, we prioritized the needs and goals of the business and their customers.This became the foundation that would inform every decision throughout the video's creation.
Understanding
the Customers
Sunset serves a wide range of clients. Together we developed unique user profiles to help us craft a targeted message and determine who this video is for. The goal of this stage is to really understand the needs and wants of the customer so we can build true empathy, depth, and value into the video.
Sunset User Traits
Overwhelmed
High-expectations
Industrious
Price Driven
Appreciative
Lean
Defining the Brand
After covering what they do and how they do it; we then asked the big question of WHY. Through a series of exercises we defined and prioritized the core values that make up the brand's personality. This helped us paint a clear picture of how it should look, sound, and feel.
Brand Attributes
Fun
Dedicated
Team Driven
Knowledgable
Resourceful
Progressive
The Logo
One of the specific objectives during this phase was to create a reusable Sunset Transportation logo animation. An animated logo helps build brand recognition, and creates consistency throughout company videos. The finished sunset animation was delivered as a simple video layer that could easily be attached to any future content.
Client Feedback
"Sunset was introduced to David Probst through a trusted referral, and we couldn’t be happier with our entire video experience. From start to finish, David guided us through brand and message goal-setting, content creation, and design implementation. His open style of communication and creativity were a great fit with our production team, and the result was a highly-customized explainer video that truly captured the essence of Sunset’s business practices, and our sometimes silly personality. We can’t wait to work with David again, and to share more great work with the masses! "
Kacey Schaeffer,
Director of Marketing
The American Advertising Awards is one of the industry's largest creative competitions, attracting nearly 35,000 professional and student entries each year through local club competitions. The mission of the American Advertising Awards is to recognize and reward the spirit of creative excellence in advertising.
The President of AAF Colorado Springs tasked me with producing a intro video for the city's upcoming Awards show, this years theme and title was "The Great Adsby".
The Challenge
There were two main objectives for this project. First, we needed to create video that helped set the stage for new participants while presenting a familiar event to the seasoned pros in a fresh and unique way. Second, being the official intro video for the entire night it had to build up the anticipation and excitement of everyone in the audience.
The Solution
In collaboration with illustrator Drew Ordway, we pulled inspiration from The Great Gatsby movie and book to create an animated video that captured the essence of the roaring 20s; a wild and glamorous era of fast cars, jazz, speakeasies, and wild youth.
And who better to communicate the key points of the event than a vintage sounding radio host? The idea was that the viewer goes along for the ride as the radio host sets the stage, the destination of course being the Awards Show. When writing the script I was able to embellish the dialogue with all kinds of over the top 1920s lingo, which helped keep the information light and easy to follow.
As our viewers see the car arriving at the theater, we wanted to shift gears, speed up the pace, and throw the viewer into a visual celebration of Gatsby themed party elements. To clearly depart from the first part of the video we transitioned the art style into a look that's simple, bold, and reminiscent of a classic Saul Bass title sequence. This along with a change in music was intended to pull the viewer in and build a peak of excitement for the audience.
Building peaks and valleys throughout an intro video creates a dynamic viewing experience and can add emphasis to important moments. So before arriving at the end title I decided to suddenly drop everything to black for a few seconds, as we fade into the red curtains the title is slowly revealed as the camera pushes forward. The goal was to make it feel as epic as possible. The Great Gatsby holds on screen for an extended period of time to hype up the crowd right until the very last moment.
The Final Result
With the Colorado Springs advertising community gathered together eager for the show to start, the lights dimmed, the video played and ended with applause and excitement as the host walked on stage. The 2020 Colorado Springs Advertising Awards was a night filled with competition, camaraderie and conviviality! The Gatsby theme was a success and everyone had a roaring good time.
The wonderful team over at ThreeSixtyEight contacted me to help them create a series of animated videos as part of an online interactive learning platform they were developing for the Louisiana Department of Health. The platform was a website designed to educate early childcare centers on how to prepare and respond to natural disasters. In total, we created four videos, one for every module of the site. When users start a module, the animated video provides a engaging and playful summary of the lesson before the user continues to scroll down the page.
My main role in the project was animation, and I also provided creative direction, compositing, and bits of illustration along the way. The lead illustrator for this project was Adam Graves and it was an absolute pleasure getting to collaborate and bring his artwork to life.
Scroll down for a look behind the scenes.
The Art Style
The look and feel of the project was intended to resemble something straight out of a children’s book, which helps communicate the message in a way that is both educational and approachable to those in childcare. After refining the storyboards, Adam and I worked together to determine the creative and technical details of each scene. He delivered some fantastic illustrations and then I set the tone for each scene by adjusting things like color, lighting, and composition.
Animation
A lot of my time was spent animating all of the monsters in each video. Working with highly detailed hand drawn characters presented a fun challenge when it came to making them move. I had enough time to create a single puppet rig for each character that was then recycled throughout each scene, making partial modifications when needed.
Compositing
With the base illustration and animation in place I then added texture, shading, and environmental effects. These are all the little details that tie together the various elements, and makes them feel anchored in the same space. This part of the process really helps set the mood and adds a nice sense of realism to the scene.
The Result
With all 4 videos finished the ThreeSixtyEight team added them to the site! Having a video at the top of each module is a powerful asset when combined with the complete user experience; it boosts engagement, captures the imagination, and sets the stage for the information that follows. The rest of the website is packed with all kinds of fun design elements, interactions, quizzes, and more. Big shout shout out to the ThreeSixtyEight for their amazing work, and it was a pleasure collaborating with such a talented team!
Client Feedback
"David was able to give this project the level of care it deserved. His attention to detail is amazing. He doesn’t settle for mediocracy and he constantly pushed us to be better. Every time he sent over a draft it felt like Christmas morning. He poured his heart into this project and we couldn’t be happier with the result. I can’t wait to work with him again!"
Phil Roberts,
Producer at ThreeSixtyEight
Sunset Transportation is a leading third party logistics (3PL) company based in St. Louis, MO that develops custom shipping solutions for businesses across numerous industries. Their company culture is full of energy and very team driven. Sunset places strong focus on real human interactions, which creates a positive and refreshing customer experience, especially in an industry that can be rather stiff and impersonal.
CHALLENGE
Develop Sunset's first company video to help increase visibility and communicate their brand philosophy. Maintain alignment with current marketing strategies: witty, professional, out of the box. Highlight the brand personality without getting bogged down with the details of each individual service offering.
SOLUTION
A 2 minute animated explainer video for their website: an introduction to Sunset and their "5 Promises. The goal was to make logistics less intimidating. An added touch of humor helped imbue the video with a casual, approachable feeling. In the end, we created a simplified message with a contemporary flair.
Plan of attack
Before moving into production we kicked things off with a deep dive into the logistics business. Over a one-day facilitated discovery session, I worked with the great people at Sunset to surface challenges the organization faced. In the process, we prioritized the needs and goals of the business and their customers.This became the foundation that would inform every decision throughout the video's creation.
Understanding
the Customers
Sunset serves a wide range of clients. Together we developed unique user profiles to help us craft a targeted message and determine who this video is for. The goal of this stage is to really understand the needs and wants of the customer so we can build true empathy, depth, and value into the video.
Sunset User Traits
Overwhelmed
High-expectations
Industrious
Price Driven
Appreciative
Lean
Defining the Brand
After covering what they do and how they do it; we then asked the big question of WHY. Through a series of exercises we defined and prioritized the core values that make up the brand's personality. This helped us paint a clear picture of how it should look, sound, and feel.
Brand Attributes
Fun
Dedicated
Team Driven
Knowledgable
Resourceful
Progressive
The Logo
One of the specific objectives during this phase was to create a reusable Sunset Transportation logo animation. An animated logo helps build brand recognition, and creates consistency throughout company videos. The finished sunset animation was delivered as a simple video layer that could easily be attached to any future content.
Client Feedback
"Sunset was introduced to David Probst through a trusted referral, and we couldn’t be happier with our entire video experience. From start to finish, David guided us through brand and message goal-setting, content creation, and design implementation. His open style of communication and creativity were a great fit with our production team, and the result was a highly-customized explainer video that truly captured the essence of Sunset’s business practices, and our sometimes silly personality. We can’t wait to work with David again, and to share more great work with the masses! "
Kacey Schaeffer,
Director of Marketing
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