Bits & bobs…

I t’s been a year or two in the making (well, planning) but I’m finally in production on a mixed media promotional video for Lost Marble. I’d say that I’m roughly half way through the project… although it’s side-lined again due to being heavily booked at present (I’m certainly not complaining!). The video is a mix of 2D, 2.5D, 3D animation and photos (some taken by me and a few stock).

The purpose of the animation is to promote ourselves and to very briefly explain what we do. However, it’s also a great way to demo the mixed-media style to potential clients.

There’s quite a few quirky characters and ‘cameos’ as you can see. Hunter S. Thompson is writing our script while a mostly naked Picasso shows off a set of storyboards. The client is being represented by a tattooed man with a deer head (for no good reason) and a screaming goat is the voice-over talent. You can also see myself and my wife pull open the curtains at the beginning and the plan is to have us along with the client on a Viking ship flying through the sky.  I’d had the Viking ship and screaming goat scenes planned for a couple of years and oddly enough, both are being featured in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder‘.  I suppose it’s not that odd considering that I took the idea from Norse mythology and obviously, so did Marvel and Taika Waititi.

This is the third rendition of an animated explainer video for Harkn/Happiness Lab. Happiness Lab rebranded as Harkn and then updated their look to include more colour and gradients. This meant we would need to update their video to match. Harkn saw this as an opportunity to make a few edits, reducing the overall runtime by almost half and simplifying the message.

Keeping the information to just the essentials (as Harkn have done with the most recent version) is generally a good idea when it comes to video content, especially since attention spans seem to be getting shorter and shorter as time goes by.