Prickly-Drops Explainer - Javier Rendon Illustration and Animation

Prickly Drops

I was contacted by Prickly Bear to help them create a video for the announcement of their collaboration with the language learning app "Drops". It was a really fun one! Prickly Bear folks provided the assets for the look and feel of the marketing campaign and I was in charge of the full video production, from storyboarding to sound work, here is the result!

Assets provided for the production and approved story-board below

Some interesting technical juice

Getting numbers right

In order to ensure a clean and pixel-perfect animation, precise measurements were calculated for each color-block at every stage of the video. I was asked to prepare several versions for different aspect-ratios, so it was really straightforward to change their disposition using the align tool, as their size and position were mathematically planned.

Hand-drawn feel

To enhance the dynamism of the speech bubbles and emphasize the characters' communication, a wiggle effect was applied along the text Y axis. Additionally, to achieve an animated hand-drawn appearance based on the provided designs, a combination of turbulent displace effects was utilized to add texture. The animation was then exported at 12 frames per second to further reinforce the hand-drawn aesthetic.

Duik mouth rig

I developed a diverse repertoire of mouth assets to facilitate fluent character speech. These assets were then used to construct mouth rigs using the DUIK connector tool, streamlining the animation process significantly. This approach enabled a seamless and efficient method of animating the characters' mouths throughout the video.

Animated GIF for the marketing campaign

Javier Rendon

Illustration & Animation

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