Transcripts
1. Introduction: Storytelling is the foundation for any motion project. If you have a good story, it's going to bring your concept to life in a much more interesting way than if you were to just create something that looks pretty. Hey, I'm Sarah Beth Morgan and I am a freelance illustrator and art director based out of Portland, Oregon. Today's class is about creative planning for motion design. As a creative person, you might be wondering, why not just make what you want to make? There are so many aspects and different parts of a motion project that putting it all together in an organized manner and planning it out very thoroughly is really helpful because you get to see the project as a whole so that the client and you and anyone on your team knows what's going on. If you're stuck, it can help you unlock your creativity and your potential, and will really help bring your projects to life in a much easier and more fluid way. Today, we'll be creating a new client deck by way of brainstorming, researching, mood boarding, sketching the storyboard, creating a style frame, and adding final polished to your client deck. Feel free to follow along with me, download the client deck on your end, or you can use these creative planning techniques on your own project. You should take this class if you're an illustrator who want to learn a bit more about animation or if you're an animator who wants to learn more about the concepting and creative planning process. In the past, I have really had a lot of trouble concepting and coming up with ideas. When I rely back to my creative planning process and I know the steps I need to take to create my project, eventually I will come up with some great concepts and ideas along the way. I'm really excited to teach you about creative planning, so let's dive in.
2. The Power of Planning: Creative planning can mean a number of things. But for the purposes of this class, it's going to be more about obviously planning a motion project, but also creating a deck to communicate with your clients. Oftentimes, this will be called a creative treatment, which is something that you'll show to your client to convey your ideas. Say a client came to you and they had a script and idea, but they didn't know how to bring those ideas to life. That's what we're going to be doing here is figuring out the path to create that project. This class will be beneficial to you if you are a motion designer, illustrator, or animator. But it's also really beneficial for any type of creative, even if you're just dabbling or you're a creative who wants to create a passion project on the side. This workflow is actually really helped me a lot with passion projects, because passion projects are some of the most disorganized projects I have. A lot of times, it will start with a concept, or an emotion, or a feeling. It's really hard to whittle that down into something tangible that I can actually plan and turn into a real motion project. I personally don't animate much, but as an art director and an illustrator for motion design, it really helps to understand how animation works to set my project up for success later down the line. I'm going to dive into some examples here to show you what I need. This first product I'm going to show you was a typical motion project. This was for an online school that I worked with, and I was creating a set of style frames for their final project. So with every client deck, I really like to have a hello page that says, "Thank you so much for thinking of me for this wonderful opportunity." I had some conceptual ideas and thoughts on visuals that I included here, as well as some style direction mood boards and this project was about plants. I included some actual photos of plants that were used as inspiration for the project, and this project was unique because they had two scripts. So I got to create storyboards for both which was pretty fun, and you can see those storyboards here. But then we actually also see the final frame that I created for those storyboards. Here are some ways that some of the students actually took the frames I design and turned them into animation. So as you can see from these projects, not everything I created here is interpreted in the same way. There is still a collaboration between the designer and the animator. Not everything here that I plan is going to be created exactly to the T of what I designed. The second project that I'm going to show you is called Cocoon, which was a long-term passion project that I worked on alongside my husband. This project had a very moody emotional feel to it, so you wanted to keep the tone pretty dark overall. So as you can see here, very moody and very custom to the project. So we've got some style reference, and sometimes the client will ask for things very specific like lifestyle references for characters only. So we have a page here about just the characters and potentially what they could look like, different style directions for that. The final piece is something that we're really proud of. It definitely took us a very long time and a lot of planning to create. So you can see how some of the style reference, the mood, and the emotion that we put into the beginning of this project, really carried through to the end in the final animation. As you can see looking at these examples, not every deck or client treatment is going to be the same. But they do all have that bare bones like skeleton that holds everything together, and that's what we're going to be talking about here is how you can be flexible with your creative planning, but you always go back to these essential tips and techniques to make your projects. So the first step of this process is brainstorming. We're going to take a look at a client deck and we're going to say for that brief. See what they want for their project, and start thinking about how we can create different concepts for this idea, by mind-mapping, pulling references, and looking for clues in the client brief to see what the client is actually looking for. At that point, we'll have already carved out a path for a project. I have an idea in my head of what I want this to look like, I have got my image references, I've got my concepts, and now it's time to actually start getting into story-boarding. In the story-boarding process, I'll break the script down into multiple parts and start illustrating and just creating really rough thumbnail sketches for each line of the script. A lot of times, if I'm really excited about a project, even if I have multiple conceptual or style directions, I'd like to create a style frame to show the client. A style frame is essentially just a little bit of a sample of what my final project could look like. So this will show the client the mood and feel of the project, and potentially how their characters could look, or what the style direction is going to be. The final stage will be after I already have all of my visual direction, my style frame, my storyboards, after I'm all confident with that stuff, I just want to go back into my client treatment and add a couple of finishing touches in. Whether this be some description of how I want the animation to move, or a thank you page at the end, or a little call to action, and excitement about how the project can turn out. So we'll be opening up a client deck from a client named Floatie-MicfFoat, and from there, I'll actually walk you through all of these steps we just discussed, and bring a new client human to life for this client. So you can follow along with what I'm doing here and download the same client brief, and work on your own version of this project. Or you can apply the techniques I'm going to teach you here to your own client brief or passion project. So let's get started with the first step, brainstorming.
3. Kicking Off Your Project: So for this first stage of the project, we really need to focus on the client. Like who is the client? What do they want? What are we making for them? We need to figure all of this stuff out before we get too deep into planning. This brief here that I'm about to show you is the ideal situation of description of timeline budget, but you might not always get that. You might just get us small inquiry from a client or you might have an idea that you're passionate about that you want to bring to life. The real key takeaway from this is take whatever you have and unpack it, and break it down, and turn it into something that you can actually start planning. So as I'm looking through this brief, I'm really going to keep an eye out for information about the timeline and the budget and the conceptual direction that the client wants to go. I'm also going to be thinking about how they actually created this brief. Like does this brief look fun and exciting? Is that something that they want to include in their animation? Or is a little bit more polished and dry and clean? So I'm just going to walk you through the brie now. The client is named floating mic flow and that delineate here on their first page that they want to make a commercial further custom floaties. So I'm just going to go ahead and read this through because it will help me to decipher what they're saying. I really like to read everything out loud because it means that I don't miss anything. If I'm actually saying it out loud, then I am making sure I'm grabbing all the key elements from their script and from their description. So if I'm looking at this first page of the brief here, I'm just going to underline a couple of things that stood out to me. This first paragraph is really nice because the ream really helpful in describing visually what they want to see and feel in their piece. So talking about nostalgic summer fun that definitely means something to me. It kinda reminds me of my own childhood growing up, and they really want to focus on the community pool in people playing in the pool together and using their custom floaties in that setting, and it seems like it's more about the feeling and the magic of all of that rather than just focusing only on how cool their custom floaties are. The second paragraph is a little bit more logistical and they focus more on how long it needs to be. Some of these via 30-second animated advertisement to showcase the random custom pool floaties. So when they say range to me, that means they want to show a bunch of different pool floaties. So I'll get to have some fun there playing around with different styles of floaties, and she also be focusing on their brand which is equal parts quirky and memorable, and they also mentioned that they are new to this medium, which is good to know because that means that they might not know much about animation, so I might need to guide them through that process a little bit. I might need to be a little bit extra clear with my storyboards, and I might need to have a paragraph in my deck that says here's how the animation process is going to work. They also briefly mentioned that they're excited about some fun transitions and surreal scenes, and on this page here about the script and their information about their timeline, they basically say another timelines really flexible and they're not too worried about budget which is pretty insane honestly. Pretty awesome. This is a dream project that basically means to me that I could have a larger team, I could have my selected designers and animators on it because I have more range of choice there, I can work with people that I'm excited to work with. They also really know a few times that they're not afraid to get weird. So I'm really going to keep that in mind as I'm working here on my transitions and my storyboards. They also give me a couple ideas for what the floaties could look like possibly a cigar for grandpa and a giant wave of 100 floaties. So they're open to showcasing their floaties in different ways which is also really great. For this page with their image references, this is really helpful to have. I really love when a client sync her image references because that means I can actually see you what my starting point is and I can see how open they are to things, and this page is really awesome because they show a little bit of character because I'm definitely going to have to have some characters in here. If I'm showcasing floaties, I'm going to need to show the people who are using them. It's also about memories and nostalgia. So I also need to focus on the people who are living those memories. I love these characters they put here because they're just really silly and goofy and playful and it makes me excited to play around with different styles for that, and then in the second image, they say they're open to bold shapes and colors. So that's something I can play with. They didn't provide a color palette which sometimes a client will provide a brand color palette. But here since they didn't provide that, I can use cues from this image reference board to create my own color palette. Then in this last image here, they're just open to getting weird. I also can tell overall that looking at all of these illustrations together, these are all pretty different styles. So that means I have some flexibility in my style direction that I can go, and you're not always going to get a perfect brief from a client like I have here. This is pretty ideal. A lot of times you'll just get an email with an inquiry and you might need to actually ask for some more information, and if they don't have that information or they don't know what they want, you can always go to their website or you can check out projects they've done in the past to see if there's some more information out there about what they're interested in. A lot of times if a client doesn't give me something, I'll go to their website and see they have an animation from an old project and that it gives me an idea of what they were open to. If it's something they published online that means it's something they're comfortable with and hopefully I can push that and play with that a little bit more in my own animation. So after I've gone through and deciphered the brief highlighted, a couple of things that I think are interesting and that I can keep in mind while working. I also like to go into Photoshop and actually summarize everything in my own words. For me, this is really nice because it keeps everything in one document. It also becomes a brief overview that I can look to as I'm creating my storyboards and my illustrations further on down the line. This is some place where I can just jot down things I'm thinking. Maybe the client has a different goal and they really want to play around with a different type of animation, so I'll keep that in mind here. Or it could be personal goals like maybe I want to use this project to try out a new style that I've been thinking about. So I just try to keep that all consolidated into one place so I can reference it later. After I've summarized everything in my own words, I like to keep that same dock open and create a new layer where I'll start writing out a mind-map.
4. Brainstorming Your Concept: My map is basically like a safe place where I can just write down any ideas that I want, connect them together visually just so I can plan out where I'm going to go next. So I usually just start with the client's name in the center of the frame, and then start writing out what I actually know about the project. This doesn't need to look pretty, it can be as messy as you want. So I know that they want to showcase their products, which are pool floaties, so that will be one call out. Another call out could be about the script and what I've deciphered from the script. A third call out could be about the brand essence and mood that they want to portray. Then another one could be about the different moments that I want to see happening in the pool. They seems like they really want to focus on those fun quirky memorable moments that you had as a kid in the pool, and I want to make those unique and stand out. So I want to focus on what those could potentially be here. Maybe it's about tanning at the pool when you're a teenager, or having a chicken fight with your friends in the pool when you were little, or doing handstand. So I'm just going to write all that out here just to get a better idea of what those could be. So here I've got the brand and the script, and the different visual styles that I could play with. Once I've got those main overarching concepts, then I can start branching off into smaller parts of the mind-map. Whenever I have an idea of something that can work there, I just jot that down, it doesn't have to be a good idea, but I can always come back to it later and use that in my project. So I really wanted to first focus on their product, and I wanted to showcase that they can have a range of different custom pool floaties. So I brainstormed a bit on what those could be. I was thinking about the cool shapes that could play into this. So maybe a pizza floaty would be cool, or even a unicorn could be interesting to play with. Just different shapes and sizes and colors of floaties that I can potentially include in my storyboard. Then as I was saying earlier, we want to focus on those fun pool moments. I've included a couple of those here. Maybe we play with the lifeguard and somehow he's involved, or synchronized swimming could be really cool, and that could be a really fun way to play with symmetry in my piece. That could be a really cool way to maybe transition. So we'll just keep that in mind as we're working. Then as far as the brand essence slash mood goes, I know that they are open to be humerus, and playful, and quirky, so that will really play into my style as well. So I'm just going through and circling all of these things that I think might be essential to my project so I can see what I've highlighted later and incorporate those into my storyboard. Finally, I broke down the script into different parts that I thought were interesting to play with. So grandpa's birthday, what could I use there? Well, they mentioned cigars, so I did a little call out for that. Maybe we do something with Oreos because my grandpa loved Oreos, maybe just something that makes it feel a little bit more human. Then for the puppy meet up, what can we do there? Maybe all the puppies are on cat floaties, or they're all chasing a squirrel, or something, just trying to think of fun moments that can really bring this to life. That also showcase their floaties at the same time. So now that you've seen how I did this, it's your turn to do the same thing. Take your own client brief, or even the same floating make flow brief and start interpreting it in your own way. You don't need to do it the exact same way I did, just whatever works best for you, but just start unpacking all that information for use later on. So now that we've gone through and done all of this mind-mapping, and deciphering the client brief, we're going to take that information and use it to research some visual cues.
5. Pulling References: So now that we've made our mind map, and we've deciphered the client brief a little bit, I'm going to start actually pulling some visual image references off the Internet. I always really liked to provide the client with a mood board, because it gives them an idea of what I'm thinking visually for their project. This will help me gear the project more towards how I want it to look and what I'm capable of doing, and it will also give them images to point to and be like, I don't like that, or I do like this, or this works for my project or my brand and this doesn't, so it it opens up the conversation between the client and I to start agreeing upon a visual style. So if we look back at the client brief here, we can see that they provided some references. As I'm looking at this, I notice that there are two different styles emerging here that I think it'd be really fun direction to take this project in. The first style I see is more of this handmade organic feeling. It's got these quirky characters that are using less geometric shapes or more hand-drawn. I can tell that they've used some different hand-drawn techniques for this. But then on the right, it's a little bit more bold and geometric. I'm going to take this in to different style directions. I'll have one style that's a little bit more organic and handmade feeling, and I'll have a second style that's more geometric, graphic, and bold. I really like to give the client more than one option. I'd like to give them at least two to three style directions, because this really gives them different choices that they can play with. I also really just like to have two style directions, because it shows that I'm considering them and spending a little bit of extra time to develop these ideas for them. So now that I have these two ideas in my head, I'm going to start looking for references to really hone in on what those styles look like. So for all of my projects, I really like to thoroughly organize everything in my Finder just so that I have everything laid out for me. So as you can see on the left here, I do have a section for brainstorming, for the client deck and design. Now, we're gonna focus in on the Mood board section. Right here, you can see that I've broken down this Mood section into three parts. We've got motion, style A which is that bold style I was talking about, and style of B which is the more handmade style. So I've already browse through Pinterest here, and I pulled a bunch of references. For the style A, these are all things that stood out to me, as I was browsing Pinterest, either if they related to the subject matter of the project. So like maybe it's pool or floaty-related or even water-related, and they show interesting ways of how I could manipulate my image with water, maybe, or they just have an interesting style. So we can see that this one here. This is just a really fun character. Maybe some interesting manipulations happening with the geometric shapes. Some really bold colors, and a lot of them that I have here imply motion which gives me an idea of how my team's going to animate things, and not all of these images have to relate back to the subject matter. They can be completely unrelated. A lot of times, I'll just keep some image references separate from myself to reference and not show the client them. For example, this image right here is an image of a guy's face being hit with a bowl of noodles. I don't really think that's going to help my subject matter or project in any way, but I really love the line work. I love the bold colors. I like the composition and how you can feel the implied motion in it, but it might not necessarily be something I show to the client. For the second style direction, I pulled a lot more handmade-looking image references, a lot more illustrative organic-feeling references that had a lot of texture. So this first one here, I love the bold composition. I love seeing the characters in a different way, and this one that we see a close up of the shirt and some the detail there, and maybe that's something I can play with in my own animation. I thought this image reference was really cool because they use a lot of negative space, and it plays more with line works and fills. Also, I can tell that they created texture by literally actually coloring in some of these shapes instead of just filling them with the fill tool in Photoshop. Sometimes, I really like to pull GIFs as well for my clients, because it shows them how something could be animated. It just brings your deck to life if you can include some moving images as well. Especially for this client, I wanted to pull a bunch of motion references, because they did mention that there are a little bit new to the animation industry, so it might be a little bit harder for them to envision what the final product is going to look like. So for me, the best place to find animation references is usually starting with Vimeo, so I browse Vimeo. A lot of times, I'll look for animation studios that I know I like their work, or if I've found an animation studio or an animator on Instagram or social media, I'll look at where they work, find them on Vimeo, and then just start browsing those videos from there. Vimeo is also really great at suggesting extra content for you. So if you find one video you really like, it might be really easy to find the other one that's similar. So I really love this Camp 2018 titles, because we see some really fine and playful characters, really like quirky, and the motion is very steppy, which is cool for this project because it feels a little bit more handmade. I also really love this Goldi Launch Film because we do have that more bold factory style, but also just a very playful and goofy overall feeling to it. It's also a totally different way of using characters. As we saw in the Camp 2018 titles, those felt a lot more hand-drawn. But what this Goldi Launch Film right here, I can tell they could have been animated and after-effects. So it also is depending on my team, like maybe I have an After Effects animator and not a cell animator. Maybe this is something I would consider more thoroughly, well, sending it to the client. This Random Acts of Kindness video is a really awesome example of how we can use organic textures and organic movement to create a really cool piece. The great thing about this one, is I see they have a lot of cuts and match cuts that could be interesting to incorporate into my storyboards, because it might mean that I spend less time creating those transitions and actually spend more time developing my frames and developing more of the character action rather than transitions. In this final piece I pulled is a really cool vertical pan, very summer vibe feeling. I think it can be really interesting to show to the client, because it has a vector feel to it as well. Now that I've shown you a little bit here about folder structure and looking for your own image references, go ahead and do this on your own for your own project. You can use whatever resources you want, if you have a favorite inspiration website, or you want to go to a museum near you, or you even wanted just browse Pinterest like I did here. The goal here is really to just pull a bunch of image references, as much as you can, and start dividing those out and creating two distinct visual styles. Next up, we'll actually start putting this together in a Mood board.
6. Moodboarding Your Style Directions : So we've pulled a bunch of references now. We need to start consolidating those down and curating them to show them to the client. This is really important because it helps you and your client align on a creative voice. So in order to create these mood boards, I need to ask myself a few questions while I'm looking through my references. Has the client worked on something like this in the past and will the style scare them visually? Or are they excited and open to pushing creative limits? Maybe the style and the character renderings that you have in your mood references are actually how you want your project to look, or this can just create an overall mood or feeling for your project. Maybe you just want to show this mood where as a whole to the client so they can see how everything will fit together later on. Over the years I've used a bunch of different programs to create my decks for my clients. I really have come to love Google Slides and Google Slides is really awesome because it's something that I can edit in real time. So if I send the client something and I realize I made a typo or I wanted to add another mood reference in, then I can easily go and change that real quick before they see it. But sometimes if the client sent me a PDF to begin with I can tell they really like PDFs, so I'll actually export my Google Slides template as a PDF, I can download that and email it to them that way. Here's the template I put together. This is a pretty rough outline of a basic motion project, but I usually start with my logo here and then I'll write the client's name and on the second page I usually have an introduction page like, ''Hey, thank you so much for thinking of me for this wonderful opportunity,'' and kind of summarize what I'm going to be showing them in the stack. Then on from there I go into my Visual Concepts and this is where I'll keep my mood boards. I'll usually name each concept, just give it a little name so that the client can talk about it easily, it's not just concept A and concept B, gives it a little bit more personalization, and then after that I'll write a little description about it and then include the mood references on the next page. This template is available for you to download in the class resources. So here's where I actually figure out what images I'm going to put in my board. I don't usually like to add too many images, if I had like 10 images on this page it would actually get a little bit overwhelming, there might be too much detail and information and it might not highlight things in the way we want it to. So I'm going to start going through my bold style A reference and adding images there. Usually, I'll just start dropping in ones that speak to me as I'm working, so like this one I love the character style and it reminds me of some of those characters that they had in their deck, and all of these are great but I'm trying to vary things up a bit. So I don't want to add too many characters because I don't want it to only be about the characters, I need it to be about the style as well. I think this one's pretty cool because it really gives me that feeling of vintage and nostalgia but it also is very graphic at the same time. This one just has a really cool style and I really like this references because it shows how I could play with the effects of water in my animation but still using a bold vector u style. So now I'm just going to start organizing them and trying to fit them together on the page, something to look compositionally sound so there's not too much darkness on one side or too much heaviness on the other. I try to keep my composition here a little bit balanced for the mood board. This bottom image right here on the bottom left, as you can see I actually cropped it because it didn't really fit too on the page, but I didn't want to overwhelm the page with this image because if I use the whole image it would just take up the whole left side of the page and I wanted to include more than just four images. So for the second concept I've gone ahead and just added in a few references that I already had and I curated them a bit. Here you can see I actually added in that animated GIF that I really liked. I loved how it felt kind of step B and organic and like it was handmade and someone actually style animated it, so that was really cool to include, kind of gives the client an idea of how a character could be animated. I also really loved how most of these colors felt very nostalgic. We have some very warm hues kind of washing out this whole pallet here. We've got different executions of styles, so we've got some line work in here. We also have moments where the shapes are filled in by hand. So I tried to keep it really balanced and added a big chunk of red on the left and a big chunk of red on the right so that it didn't feel like there is too much on one side of the page. I also tried to keep the image references varied so that I could see how I could take this handmade style on a couple of different directions, but yeah, overall I didn't want to overwhelm them with too many options because the style can get pretty detailed. So I kept it to about six images here. Once I have both of these mood boards done and I can actually look at all of my images together, laid out together, I want to go back in and actually just name them. I don't usually think too hard about these names, I just want them to be something unique that the client can point to so they don't need to be anything crazy, it's more just for the purposes of the deck. So I named this one Go Boldly because it just summarizes the entire style direction. If you look at these images here all I can think is variables big blocky shapes, bold colors, so I think Go Boldly is a very appropriate name for this one. Then for the second style direction I think it might be nice to call it Made by Hand because it does feel very touched by the human hand. We see a lot of hands-on elements in here and that will be really memorable when the client is pointing to it. Something I also really like to do sometimes just as a little bonus for the client is to add some color palettes in, and this isn't unnecessary but since this client didn't actually provide me with a color palette I want to give them a couple of options, and I think this will really add to the customization of my deck. For this first concept, the Go Boldly concept, I wanted to play around with these really bold colors and I really loved the interplay of this red and blue here and I thought they looked really nice together. They have slightly different values, there's a warm and a cool aspect to them. So as a rule I really like to include a warm cue and a cool hue in my palettes. I also like to include neutrals, so like a black or a dark gray or some other dark color that I can use for shadows and then I also include a white or a light color that is comparable to white here, and then for this one I just added a couple extra colors in because I thought all of these really bold graphic colors worked well with this palette. Since they wanted it to feel nostalgic I also wanted to bring it back down to Earth with a little bit more warm organic color here with this orange. Then I use the same base as the color palette for concept B, but I did change the colors a bit to match what I had in the mood board here. Sometimes I will actually go into my mood board and color pick but I don't always like to do that because I don't want to get too close to one reference, so I usually go into Photoshop and tweak those colors a bit but as you can see here this Made by Hand palette is just a little bit more warm feeling. It has more of that vintage feel because it is so warm overall. So while creating a color palette and including a color palette in your treatment deck is totally optional. It's nice to have that extra step because once you start moving forward with the project, if the client actually liked the color palette, you've already done a little bit of work ahead of time, or it also gives your client things that they can point to and say they don't like it or they do like it and it will really help you start creating the specific style direction for your project. Go ahead and start putting your mood boards together into a deck, just have fun with it and decide which image references work best for your project. So next up we're going to take these styles to the next level and start incorporating them into a storyboard.
7. Storyboard: Planning the Narrative: So here we are in storyboarding phase. This is one of the most stressful yet exciting and essential part of a motion project. So on a base level, a storyboard is basically the bones or skeleton of your animation project. It's going to show you the map or the path to get to your final product. It will show you what you need to design, but also show the animators how things are going to move. It sets you up for creating cool transitions and it also pairs the client's script along with your visuals. So storyboarding can be pretty stressful because you are thinking about everything you've already come up with already and it's a lot of information to take and put together and then create something new with. But it's also really exciting because it's where you do see everything come together and you start seeing a real animation project forming out of your storyboard. So I really like to storyboard and a few steps. I start by importing the script into my storyboard template, and from there, I'll start thinking about the actions. So I might just write out and jot a few notes of what I want to actually happen in the frames. Then from there, I'll create some super, super rough sketches to the point where they probably look bad. Then once I finally get those the place that I like them, I'll go in and refine those for the client. So when I was first starting out in my job in motion graphics world, I wasn't really sure how to storyboard for animation. I knew a bit about motion graphics from school, but I didn't really know how transitions work and I was more of an illustrator than an animator. Oftentimes, I would go to someone on the animation team and ask them if what I was creating for my storyboard was doable with the timeline and budget. So if you can't find an animator, try to find comparable animations online to give you an idea of what you should be doing with your project. If you're tight on timeline or budget, you might want to try some shortcut options like using cuts or match cuts instead of fluid crazy transitions. You might want to consider not using any characters because character animation takes a lot of time and extra care. Also just keeping your designs, overall, really simple including less backgrounds to animate, will be really helpful if you have a tight timeline or budget. When I'm creating an editorial illustration, I need to think about encapsulating a mood or a feeling in one image. But here for animation, we need to think more about how we capture a mood or a feeling throughout an entire piece. You don't want to get too attached to anything here, because if one changes based on client feedback, you might have to change all of them. Once you get used to this process, it;s actually freeing because you can be really rough with your storyboard and be open to changes and creating new and exciting compositions. So I actually have a storyboard template I use often and I've just created this from scratch in Photoshop. But this is essentially just a bunch of rectangles 16 by nine video format rectangles, that I've included in a Photoshop document here. It's really just numbers and places to add in the script. So right now, I have this storyboard template that's about 24 frames long. I could extend it if I wanted, I could copy these rectangles to make it a little bit longer, if I have a really long animation. But for this project right now, I'm just going to start adding in the VO lines and start to separate those by what I think could be like one action. So for example, if I look at the script here and I see the first line, no matter what the occasion, Floaty McFloat has your back. So that could actually be one line or two lines. Maybe "No matter what the occasion" is one line and "Floaty McFloat has your back" is a second line. Just want to start feeling out the flow and the pacing of the project here when I'm adding these VO lines to my storyboard. So to bring those lines into Photoshop, I'm actually just going to screenshot or copy and paste my script here, so that I can reference it as I'm adding those lines in. So this script was pretty natural to break up the lines. Each line was its own separate thoughts. So I kept this first line "No matter what the occasion," "Floaty McFloat has your back" as one thought because it does seem like it could all work together in one frame here. Then grandpa's birthday, the adorable puppy, meetup, revenge, all of those seem like they could lead to different visuals and different moments. So I kept those all separate and we can figure out some cool ways to transition between them. Then the great thing about this story Word template is I can actually just go in and crop it to the size of my project. So I don't need all these extra frames. I can just crop it in Photoshop to the size that I need so that I can more easily import it into my deck on Google Slides. Now, I'm just going to go ahead and start writing in some ideas I have for this project. This can change as I'm working, but it's great to have this little outline before I start sketching. So say in the first room we're like opening on a community pool. I'll write that down here, but then I'll also maybe write about how we're going to transition to the next frame. I'm thinking about how I'm bringing my shot, maybe this first shot is a medium shot. I'm thinking film terms here sometimes like medium shot, or close up, or wide shot. Then I'll also point to what the transition will be. So will that be a match cut? Will there be some crazy morphing transition? This is all where I'm just starting to begin to think about all of the way things will move. So to do that, I'm going to make a new group in my Photoshop document, just so that I have all my sketches together on a different layer. Sometimes, I'll break these up into different portions too, so maybe you'll have frame one, frame two. This is really just for me as a reference. I'm thinking it would be really cool in this first shot to just open on the back of a kid. Maybe he's our main character. Maybe we have a hero. Maybe he's looking out at all the action that's happening in the pool. So this can just be super rough and doesn't need to look pretty, because no one's going to see this and it can just be a really base of an idea. It doesn't even need to be this thorough. What I wrote here is just open on the back of a kid, facing pool, wearing a tube floaty, he jumps in. Then maybe just thinking a little bit ahead about transitions here. Maybe there's some splash that takes us to the next frame. Maybe I'll just write splash between those frames. It's okay if this isn't what actually happens later on, but it's good to have that thought in there, think about the motion. Then in this next line, grandpa's birthday, a sure thing. Maybe we actually follow the kid as he splashes into the pool and maybe he's floating under grandpa's. He's enjoying a cigar and whiskey on his floaty. So maybe he glides past him. It's nice to sometimes use visual verbs here to give yourself and the animator an idea of how this action will be moving. So as you can see here, I'm writing out the description of what we're actually going to see, like the visual frame of what we're going to see. But I'm also adding some cues for animation. We see that the kids wearing a tube floaty, but then he also jumps into the water, and there's some splash, and then he glides under grandpa's cigar floaty. We're just going to feel that action when I'm writing here, and this isn't necessarily going to be the action that we show to the client. But it will give me an idea of how to illustrate my frame and how to set up my composition. So right now, I've just set it up with the visuals that are going to be happening in each frame, but I haven't talked about how we're going to get to each frame. So here, I'm going to denote what each shot should be. So maybe this first shot is medium shot. We just see the kid from the knees up, maybe, and he's looking out at the pool. Then for the second frame, I might write a little note about how we're going to be under the water. So maybe this is a wider shot and we see some water distortion. To get between these two shots, I'm thinking it would be interesting to play with a more fluid water transition. Between these two frames here, I'm just going to draw a little arrow and right water transition. Maybe when the kid jumps into the water, the water splashes up and takes over the frame and then we realize we're in the next frame already. Once we see grandpa and we see the kid floating under him, maybe we actually cut to our character emerging from the water and he's surrounded by a bunch of adorable puppies, and they're all floating on little kitty floats. It's going to be super cute. So maybe we just cut there to save the animator a little bit of time. We don't want to have crazy transitions for the whole entire spot, because it's just going to get a little overwhelming. Transitions are awesome, but they also can take up a lot of times. So we want to get through this script within 30 seconds. We want to make sure we're keeping things moving. This one will just be a cut. Then maybe this is another wider shot where we see the whole scene with all the puppies. The next shot, I was thinking, that we could have someone throwing a ball, and so all the dogs get distracted and they follow the ball. We follow those dogs over to the next frame. So there's more of a camera pan happening here. So maybe this is less of a cut and we just move over to the other side of the pool. This is all something we should keep in mind as we're working because if we have something like a camera pan, we're going to actually need to build out our shot really long instead of just individual single frames, because that will make it easier for the animator when they need to create some parallax later on or we need to see some more elements between the frames. We pan over to mom who's lounging on a pineapple float reading, and the kids swim past her and shoot her with water guns. So that's like the embarrassing moment for mom. So for frame five here, I was actually thinking of switching up the composition a bit. In these earlier frames, we do see a lot of medium wide shots where we see the sides of everything and I was thinking, it would be interesting for frame five to play more with like a worm's-eye view. Maybe we see mom on her pineapple or even like a seashell float and we see her from underneath. So we really get that beautiful view of the floaty. Well, then we can also see the kids swooping in and squirting mom with water gun. So even though I already have this done here, and everything is coming together pretty well, I just want to know that while I was doing this, I really went back and looked at my mind-map and all that initial research I did. I picked out those elements that I was excited about and incorporated them into my storyboard here. It's not always going to come together so easily. It does take a lot of trial and error. It's not super easy all the time to just start jotting things down and be like, okay, it's great. A lot of the times I'll have to go back in and erase things, and I'm like, this transition definitely won't work here or even past this stage. Sometimes, I will write things down and they sound great, and then I'll start sketching, and it will just completely fall apart. So I need to rethink a few things and that's totally normal, and that's part of the brainstorming and creative planning process.
8. Storyboard: Sketching the Action: So now that I've already got my ideas down, I've figured out my narrative, I want to actually see if this works. I'm not sure if what I've written here actually will create something that looks cool. So I'm going to go in and actually just do super, super rough basic thumbnails. This is where it can get super messy, and I can manipulate things and erase things. This is really just for proof of concept here. So normally, I'll just turn off this idea sheet and I can keep it there just to reference back whenever I want. But I'm just going to start by illustrating this back of a kid, facing the pool, wearing the tube floaty. Right here, I'm not really thinking too hard about character design yet. I'm really just focusing on the composition and how things will be laid out. Maybe I illustrate the guy too small and you can't see his floaty. So I got to change that as I go. Here's where I can start thinking about some perspective, maybe we see the character is flat and perspective, but we have some cool, like one-point stuff happening in the background. Perhaps we see more of what's happening in the pool, like the chairs. Obviously, we can go through and add a whole bunch of detail later on. This is really just to see how everything gets framed up. If I look back at my idea sheet here and everything that I wrote out for this, I do mention transitions and I do want to imply those transitions in my storyboard. But I don't want to completely illustrate those transitions because I do want to leave some things open to the animator, and maybe they'll have a different perspective on it. Maybe they'll want to do something crazy or that I didn't even think of because my brain doesn't always work that way. Animators definitely have a different way of thinking and can bring some new life to the project later on. So here since I'm not actually explicitly drawing out the transition, I'm just showing how we can get to the next frame by illustrating the character swimming. If I look back on my idea sheet again, I did mention a wider shot distorted by water and that distortion is something we can add later on in design. But maybe we do show the bottom of grandpas cigar floaty because that's what they're talking about in this line. At this point in the process, I don't really need to worry about everything being separated on separate layers because it's not like someone's going to be animating these storyboards. So I've finished my rough sketches here and I just want to note a couple things. From my original rough ideas that I had written out to the actual rough thumbnail sketches, a couple of things have changed, notably in frame 5 when we see the mom reading on her pineapple floaty, I actually changed that to a seashell floaty because I just think that has a better silhouette in illustration. I think it'll be much prettier to play with, and will actually really lead nicely to the swans in the next frame because they've got a lot of those organic curves. So the next phase would be to take these rough thumbnails and make them client ready. I want them to be more digestible. I want the client to be able to see the composition better. But I also want to disclaim to them that the compositions can be changed up through design and that we can apply these two different conceptual styles to them. So this is about the level of refinement that I would show it to a client. I don't want to get extremely detailed. But I'll sometimes actually start having fun with composition here. So if there's a frame I'm getting really excited about, I really like when I'm doing in frame 3. I might spend a little bit of extra time there to make the composition look cool. You can also see here that I wasn't super happy with frame 4 in my rough storyboard. But when I took it in and refined it, I switched up the angle a little bit. I added a little bit more personality to it. That has me more excited about bringing into design. So from here, I'm actually going to save this as a JPEG and upload it to my client deck in Google slides. So save this as a JPEG on my desktop. Then I go into my client treatment that I've created in Google slides, and I've already set this up with my storyboard templates. So I'm just going to go ahead and replace the image and upload that from my folder. You might need to do some adjusting to make sure it fits in there properly. So once you've uploaded this, this means you already have your V0 lines written in here, and we just need to add the action descriptions of everything. So the client can better understand what's happening in each frame. Here I've actually written out all the descriptions, and I just want to note that they are much different than what I wrote in my Photoshop document here. These were just very initial rough ideas for myself. But I'm taking extra care to write in something more interesting and engaging for the client. I'm also describing how the animation is going to work and how we are going to cut and transition and potentially how each character will move. So in the first frame, we opened on the back of our kid protagonists. He's facing the neighborhood pool wearing a tube floaty. He jumps in and the water splash transitions us to the next frame. For the second frame, we follow the kid as he glides underwater. Above him, his grandpa's writing a custom cigar float and drinking whiskey happily. The actual description I wrote here for the second frame isn't too much different than what I actually wrote in my rough idea. But I do add things in, like happily and gliding just so that there's more of a mood evoked through these words. We want to make sure that we emphasize that people are having fun while using floaty mcfloats floaties, and that they're really enjoying themselves and that means that they're creating memories, which is what the whole concept is about. Just some things to keep in mind as you're working on your storyboards here. Number 1, is that we just want to make sure that all of our storyboards are pretty universal. If we look back at the visual directions that we've created here, I want to make sure that I can translate my storyboards into both of those styles moving forward. So if the client really loves concept A and they want to make this style really bold and vectory, I want to make sure that the storyboards I've created here will actually work with that style. Then number 2, is that you want to put yourself in the animator shoes. If you don't actually have an animator to show your storyboards to, just try to think about their process here. So with my storyboards, I don't want to get too nitpicky about how the transitions are going to work. I want to leave the animator a little bit of room to play. I also want to make sure that the transitions are doable. So I don't really want to overdo it with the crazy transitions, unless that's the object of the peace. The third thing to keep in mind while you're working on your storyboards is to think about the client, putting yourself in the client's shoes. So I'm thinking about all these cool transitions and what the characters will look like, but they're really going to be thinking about their floaties. They're going to be thinking about the variety and the range of floaties we're seeing here. They also had mentioned that they are new to the animation world. So I just want to make sure that my descriptions are super clear here and that I'm showing the action as much as they can through my storyboards. So go ahead and apply this to your own project here. Start really rough and think about the action of your overall storyboard. Think about the narrative first. Then from there, start creating some rough thumbnails. Finally, finish that up with some refined sketches and writing some descriptions for your client. Next up, I'll actually be taking one of these frames here that I've created my storyboard and building it out into a style frame.
9. Styleframe: Designing a Scene: So here I'm going to walk you through creating a style frame for motion. I'm not going to get too into the nitty gritty because this isn't about illustration. But I do want to talk a bit about how to think about motion when you're creating your style frame. A style frame is like a visual sample or a visual snack for the clients so they can kind of get a little bit of an idea of what their project could potentially look like when it's brought into animation. Of course it's not going to be moving, it's going to be a still frame, but it will give them a better idea of where their project could go. I'm going to choose the frame that I'm most excited about in my storyboard, but I'm also going to choose a style direction that I like the best. So for me, I love both of these styles and I think they'd be both great to bring into animation. But I am much more drawn to this hand-drawn style that's made by hand concept B. I just loved the organic textures. I have a little bit more flexibility with my shapes, and I can be a little bit more fluid, and I really want to emphasize creating something you're passionate about here because it'll really shine through in your deck when the client sees it. So I've got my storyboard open and I've got my Brainstorming Document open in case I want to reference those again. But I'm actually going to create a new document here. The standard and animation is to create something that's 16 by nine. So 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels which is standard screens eyes, and by standard that would be 72 DPI which is screen resolution. But I actually want to make this in 300 DPI which is print resolutions is a lot higher resolution and you get a little bit more detail in your pixels. So I'm just going to create this 1920 by 1080 document at 300 DPI and before I do anything else, I'm just going to save that so that I don't end up losing all of my work, and the easiest way for me to start creating this, is actually take my sketch for my storyboard and bring it into my new document, and for me, I'm really excited about working on this puppy frame, frame number three, just because I think it'll be really fun to illustrate. There's also some interesting movement happening with the water in here. We still see our hero, our protagonist in the center of the frame, and we also see a number of floaty. So I'm keeping the client in mind hasn't choosing my frame here. I want to make sure it's a pinnacle action moment. We see a lot of the key elements of the piece. So I'll just copy that frame from my storyboard and go into my style frame document and paste that in there, and I'm just going to increase the size of that and start refining that sketch there, and this may end up looking completely different than your storyboard sketch or it could be really similar and you just want to refine some of the characters. Maybe like for this frame especially, I think that my main character looks pretty durfee. He looks a little creepy. You've got some like weird goggles stuff happening. So I'm going to fix that and then I'm also going to refine the dogs a little bit and showcase the float is a bit more. I also feel like something's missing from the top of the frame. It feels like it needs some element of tidal together. So I'm thinking maybe I'll add a sun in the background to kind of add that warmth that the client's looking for. I've dropped in my storyboard frame. But then on top of that, I'm going to create a new group and name that refined sketch, and I'm going to relabel my old sketch rough sketch, just to keep everything organized and a lot of times I like to keep my rough sketch like 10% opacity, so that I can see while I'm working, but it's not overtaking the frame. So for my main character, I'm going to switch them up a little bit, and this is where I can kind of get more into the nitty-gritty in detail of what each character looks like because I am refining everything. So now that I have the composition, I don't have to worry as much about how that looks and I can focus in on the detail, and I use command Z so much so it's okay if you don't get it right the first time. So I've gone ahead and cleaned a few things up and finished up my refine sketch here, and I've added a little bit more structure to the water. I've created the sun back here like I mentioned earlier and I think it'll be really nice framing device for the whole scene. It will kind of tie the whole composition together and will allow for some interesting color interactions at the top of the frame. So speaking of color, my next step is usually a color blocking.
10. Styleframe: Adding Color and Detail: So the main goal of color blocking here is just really to see how all the colors interact. Say I created one of these puppies first and I fully flushed them out and I added all the detail, and all the texture, and all the coloring, and then I realized I wanted to change him to a blue dog instead of a white dog, then I'd have to go in and adjust all of the details that I've already worked on. So I really like to figure out where all my colors are going to go before I start filling in all the extra detail. Since I decided to go with concept B, this more hand-drawn style, I'm actually going to use the same color palette that I've added into my client deck here. So I'm just going to drag that color palette into my file and it's pretty massive, so I'm just going to scale it down and put it in the top right corner. I can use the eyedropper tool for this really easily to just capture whatever color I working with at the moment. Just like I did with my rough sketch, I'm going to put my refined sketch on top of everything and turn the opacity down to like 7% maybe. So super faint here, and this will help me just see the overall shapes of everything to start blocking everything else. I'll create a new group. Here is also where I want to start thinking about how I'm organizing my file. For animation, we need to keep everything very separate and labeled very clearly, because the animator is going to need to get into your file and use all of those individual layers in after effects or whatever program that you're using. When I first started working in the animation industry, I didn't realize how crucial this part of the project was. So a lot of times I would make all my frame, something I was really excited about, and then we'd hand off to the animator and I would realize how poorly I had set out my file. I had extra layers in there that didn't have anything on them. I had flattened some textures, and I just realized pretty early on that this is not going to be helpful in any way for the animator. On top of that, sometimes they did have to go back into my files and re-label everything and make them more clear for the animator because I didn't do a good job of that from the start. So for color blocking, I'm just going to make a whole new layer structure and just name that color, and then within there I'm actually going to start breaking everything up according to what I'm drawing. So I'll probably start with some background elements first, and then layer on top. I'm probably going to choose the light color just because the client wants this to feel bright, and summary, and nostalgic. So I'm going to have that warm hugh tie everything together in the background. Another thing to note here is that I want to make sure that all of my shapes are complete, and what I mean by that is an animator might come into my file and move one of these dogs around, and realize that there is no information behind the dog, or the dog is only half done, or the floaty is only half there, because it's being covered by water. I want to make sure that I'm actually fully drawing out the shapes of these objects, so that the animator can use this information while they're working on animation later. Here's my final color blocking stage, where I've made sure that everything is balanced. I've got some light colors on the top and the bottom. We have red throughout as an accent and blue for the water. I've really considered the placement of all these colors, but I also want to show you what I mean by making sure that everything is complete. If we start from nothing, we can see that I actually have the full sun behind the water. So say the animator actually wanted to show the sun rising or setting, they would have that extra information there to move the sun around. Then from there, we've got the water and the puppies. So each of those is in their separate groups there'll be really easy to manipulate and move around. We've got our character who's kind of in the mid-ground, then our foreground puppies. If the animator wanted to move the float across the screen or they wanted to have it move up and down with the water, they'd have an extra bit of visual information there to use in after effects. So this is where color blocking advanced really comes in handy because everything's already ordered and layered properly, so it'll be really easy for me to figure out where everything goes, and I'll make sure to keep all of my detail layers in the same group as the color blocking layers so that the animator can easily grab those groups and treat them as a whole. In the detailing phase, I can start adding shading, I can add line work that will really start bringing it to life and add a bit of personality to my piece. So as you can see here with my final detailed illustration, I did actually go in and change a few things as I was working. The detail phase is really a great time to feel things out and see how different colors are working. So obviously you can see here I actually change the color of this dog's ear, because it was just feeling a little too contrasting the background there. I also changed the size of the sun because I thought it was working better compositionally. There's less of a weird tangent happening here with the dog on the left and the sun. So just keep in mind that not everything needs to be perfect. As you go you can easily go back and change and refine things later. From here I'll actually just save my image out as a jpeg and drop it into my client deck. My template actually doesn't have a style frames section. I'm just going to duplicate this slide nine here and customize it to my needs. Just going to name it concept be style frame. I'll delete the color palette out of it, and just insert my new stack frame. So I can just easily drag that from finder, that is the beauty of Google slides. So now it's your turn to make your own style frame and drag that into your client treatment. Now, onto the very last step which is adding a bit of polish to your treatment deck.
11. Polishing Your Treatment: Now that I've gone through, and I've created my storyboard sketches, my concepts, and even a sol frame. I've created something that I really like. But I really need to make sure that the client likes it too. I need to present it to them in a way that's easily digestible and speaks their project and their product. Even if the client isn't actually go with your original idea or they want you to go with a new direction or new style frame, at least the presentation was presented in a professional manner and you've built a little bit of a relationship of trust between you and the client. So first things first, I need to make sure that I include the project name and a description of it and even the date on the first page just so everything is put in the correct context. I'm just going to name this Custom Floaties-Concepts because that's the first phase of the project I just want to identify where we are at the stage of the project. I really do like adding the date because that will give the project context. If the client realizes they wanted something from an earlier deck they can just say, ''That deck you set me on May 2nd,I really liked what you had there and I love to include that in our project.'' On the second page I always like to have that hello page and just a description of what we're going to be showing the client in the deck. Also as you can see on a lot of pages, I've added this little box in the bottom left that says the client's name, so I just want to make sure that's everywhere because I wouldn't really want to be sending them something that just says client name the bottom left. I can just read you what I wrote here just to give you a better idea of what I'll be saying to the client. It start with, ''Thank you so much for thinking of me for this wonderful opportunity. I'm super excited to be a part of the animation process for Floaty McFloats new custom floaties campaign.'' On the following pages are some references, concepts and visual explorations of how I plan to approach creating a narrative that best speaks to your brand. I've also included a set of initial storyboards to help visualize how I imagine the script coming to life. Whether we choose to go with bowls, blocky shapes or more elegant approach, my design will take a broad range of storytelling possibilities into consideration. Creating this hello page is actually something I learned at one of the first places I worked. Whenever we'd create pitch decks for clients, we just wanted to express our excitement about a project. It just let them know that I am thinking ahead. Onto the visual concepts, the great thing about having this descriptions here is that it will put the visual style that I've provided in contexts of their projects. So for concept A I said, ''Through this bold visual direction, I'll hone in on the quirkiness and playfulness of your script. Each moment in the storyboard will be exaggerated and expanded upon. Graphic shapes will swallow the screen and hypnotize the viewer as we follow the pool floaties on their journey. While the style will be more graphic and sleek, the characters will still feel surprising and memorable. The colors will be tinted with a nostalgic green.'' Concept B Made by Hand says, ''The second visual concept would focus on one of the key elements of your brand: nostalgia. Nothing feels more nostalgic than something drawn by hand. Made by Hand will be rife with texture and charming illustrated characters. This treatment will come to life through frame-by-frame cell animation adding even more to the handmade feel.'' As you can see here, I did actually go into a bit about animation and how that will add to the visual style. I can also add in a couple adjectives to briefly explain the mood boards. So as they're looking at these mood boards, they'll actually see maybe three adjectives down here at the bottom that describe that style. Rather than just reading that entire paragraph that I wrote, there's a little more succinct description down bottom. So for concept A, I can say that its folds, quirky, and graphic. For concept B, I can expand upon what I said in the description and say it's fluid, handmade, and nostalgic. Also it is really great for the client to look at in reference as they're looking at the visuals, they can see what I've written and the visuals together at once. Before the client actually sees a storyboard, it is nice to have a little blurb about animations they can think about that as they're reading and digesting through my storyboard. Especially for this client Floaty McFloat, they expressed that they're new to the animation world. So I just want to give a more thorough description of what's going to be happening. Maybe the storyboard isn't enough, maybe they want to hear more about the actual process or they want to hear more about the type of animation I'll be using, and whether it's cell animation or after effects animation, this page here is where I can expand upon that a little bit. A note on animation. Regardless of which visual concept you choose, the final animation of this piece will flow smoothly, reminiscent of cool water circulating in a pool. It'll be animated by hand, which will give it a bit of tactile feel. On the following pages, you'll find a storyboard and animation reference. While the storyboard portrays general concepts and ideas, it's not an accurate representation of how the final designs will look. In the design phase after choosing a style, I'll go back in and bring each frame to life through refinement in detail. So now that I've given the client a disclaimer with a little note on animation before the storyboard, they can look at the storyboard with new eyes and understand how the process is going to work after this. So after the client has adjusted the storyboard and they've actually seen all of the visual directions that we plan to take this project or you can potentially take this project, I also like to end with a little animation reference page. I do feel like if a client sees an animation that they really like in the beginning, they might latch onto it and then compare all of the visual direction I've given them to that animation. I ended up going with two different directions for my animation reference, and I chose one that felt like more bold vector style that I have for my concept A, and I chose a second one that has more of an organic handmade feel like concept B. For the Goldi launch film I say, this goofy piece has more vector feel, reminiscent of our concept A. While the style is refined, the character acting in silly situations brings a story down to earth. The lower frame rate helps too. It is pointing to the actual animation aspect here. So for the second one, the random acts of kindness animation, I say that this emotional narrative incorporates a really nice, steppy handmade feel that would pair nicely with constant B. This last page is really just a personal goodbye note. I want to tell the client that I'm still thinking about them and I'm excited to move forward with this no matter what their feedback is. All in all, I'm ecstatic to dive into design on this quirky narrative for your team. I love collaborating with unique brands like yours to concoct the perfect recipe of nostalgia, humor, and character. I love to create something memorable for your brand that people can't stop watching. I can't wait to hear what you think. Just a final final sign-off here, I'd just like to have a thank you page and I didn't see that the client had a thank you page in their deck. So it's really nice to mirror that here. To personalize it a little bit, I think it would be nice to add one of my reference photos in here just as a customization, just remind them that I'm making this for them again. Once I finish adding everything that I want to add and I've made sure that all of my mood boards are in there, all my storyboards, and all my visual descriptions are in there, I like to make sure that everything is centered and everything just looks good and very cohesive overall. I have included this project template in the class resources so you can open it and duplicate it and use it for yourself. This is really just a bare bones skeleton of something that you can make your own and infuse your own personality into. So at this point, I'm feeling really good about this client treatment and I'm ready to send it off to my client, Floaty McFloat.
12. Final Thoughts: Okay, so here we are, we've finished our project, and we've gone through all of the steps of getting a client brief, deciphering it, brainstorming, creating mood boards, sketching, creating storyboards, and making a style frame. We've put that all together in a client deck that's easily digestible. This is something that works great for me and my clients in my animation projects over the years. But you might want to take something that you've learned here and apply it in a different way to your own project. This is really just creating a framework for you to set up your creative projects for success. So I hope that taking this class has given you the confidence to tackle any creative project. If you've been following along with your own project, please share that in the project gallery, I'd love to see what you make. Thank you so much for taking this class. Happy creative planning.
13. Explore More Classes On Skillshare: [MUSIC].
Sarah Beth Morgan, Director + Illustrator
