Merry XXX-Mas, everybody. Here's an animation to accompany Jame's Fauntleroy's song, the Neck for his newly released album, the Warmest of Winters.
Moodboard
Platoon is one of my favorite clients because they strike the perfect balance of providing an initial vision, while still letting my style and ideas shine through. Below is the initial moodboard they provided. It established the simple flat style similar to Cat Snack Bar (a mobile game) as well as the assembly line and conveyor belts. We wanted to have the quirky, wonky flair of some of the claymation classics like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Sketches
I designed the elves first as this was an aspect James was specific on. When designing characters for motion, I always keep their movements in mind: "Can I make this dude move how I want him to?" Below are some early designs for the elves. We went with more vacant Studio Ghibli styled eyes for the final.
Once the elves were established, I created sketches for the workshop in Procreate on the iPad. There were certain machines I knew I wanted to include and had to fill the gaps with Christmas decor. One challenge was to create a modular system that could adapt to both horizontal and vertical sizing.
I like to describe the motion I have in mind to the client and I also provided a really rough color mockup.
Digital
Now comes the full buildout of the illustration in Adobe Illustrator. The initial pitch: "an elf workshop with adult toys", was an unusual request and I wanted them to be tasteful and fit within my overall style.
Animation
And finally, the animation is completed in Adobe Illustrator. For a simple style, this animation was technically one of the most difficult I've done. Syncing all of the objects to the path along the conveyor belt and having them change color and be wrapped along the way is really complicated!
