Vanilla Story

WHITEBOARD ANIMATION

In everyday's life, vanilla is everywhere around us. We know it mostly only as an ice cream flavor. But it is applied to almost every food products that we didn't even realize.

Getting to know more about Vanilla Story, since it's definitely nothing like what everyone assumed as boring, plain or dull. The objective of this whiteboard animation project is especially to convey those remarkable stories, from history to how it could grow in a sustainable vanilla business practices.

Concept

Work in Progress

Final Design

Anchor 1

Challenges.

This project is particularly interesting because this is my first time doing whiteboard animation with a long duration. Since I usually only create short simple presentation or sketched bumper video. The challenging part is especially due to a short deadline, 2 months.

It was challenging to deal with motion and 2D animation using After Effect, after getting more used to 3D animation. But I was having quite some fun with this project, because it's all sketching time and I always love going back to the basic and manually hand-drawing stuff because ideas surely can flow :D

Tools.

Pencil, Drawing Pen, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effect, Adobe Premiere and Audacity

Roles.

With the tight deadline, my responsibility on this project was to produce a good quality whiteboard animation from scratch, with some supportive materials provided by client. Here they are:

• Script

• Storyboard

• Sketch & Illustration

• Post Pro & Subbed

• Digital Coloring

• Animation

• Video Editing

Client.

Tripper Inc/ Tripper Nature

Date.

August - September 2019

FINAL WHITEBOARD ANIMATION

Overview.

There's always something special about Vanilla, even though most people might seem to think that this is a plain ingredients. Somehow it even became the word that describe something 'boring' and 'dull', like hearing someone called a person 'vanilla guy'. Most people think it's a white color ingredients due to our familiar vanilla ice cream.

Everything about it is so fascinating, from its history, the curing process, its variant shape and color changes, and moreover the effort put to produce the final product. Therefore, this project is all about explaining those facts in a visually appealing hand drawn and whiteboard animation style.

Video Playlist at client's Youtube channel

Concept Brief.

As the video concept, the client wants to have a hand-drawn style to convey its personal touch value of doing vanilla business, which is why whiteboard animation was the style to go to. They want a presentation that is not boring and could keep the attention of audiences. Also not too formal but still playful and informative.

Managed by the two brothers, Francois and Olivier Bernard, the company always put an 'added value' to everything they did.

From the products and business relations with customer to a directly sustainable agriculture practices with farmers in its natural sources. Vanilla is not that easy to get or grow, since only several places in the world could produce a really good quality vanilla beans.

Both owners want to convey and share in a video format, about how special this ingredients are. For the briefs, they already have a raw story line in mind. So what I need to do is to conclude and categorized them into a good and naturally flowing story in script, which are separated into four sections. Here are some final briefs conclusion to mark the starting of this project.

• Client wants to have a manual sketch and inked drawing style

• The main vanilla video will be divided into four story sections, such as :

1. The history of Vanilla

2. The curing process of Vanilla

3. Hard facts and challenges of Vanilla business in the global market

4. Sustainable vanilla as the solution

• They want to add a color to the drawing

• Client wants the character could move and animated so it'll be more dynamic

• Client wants the company logo to be included in the drawing whenever possible

• Client will provide the dubbing and copy-writing spell checked in their internal team

• Client wants subtitled version of the video, including web version for their Youtube channel.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Raw Ideas Sketches.

After hearing what storyline that the client had in mind, it started to flood my brain. However, before even starting on anything, I like to round my head with ideas, pouring them using pencil and paper. I still believe that is the best way to first start the engine running with ideas. Here are some of the initial sketches, raw and sometimes just a blurry doodle that I put on paper as I was talking to myself.

I usually re-write down the ideas and brief, and then start drawing the story-line in storyboard box look-a-like. So it will be easier to separate each scenes per section or script later. I also used this method to organize the story from start to ending.

Raw Ideas Sketches and Doodles

Storyboarding.

Due to a tight deadline, the storyline and storyboard need to be completed in one week. So after presenting the rough storyboard sketches (above) to one of the client and got approved, I move forward to drawing the real storyboard sketch.

In this phase, I created a more solid ideas and composition for the actual drawing that I'm gonna use for the whiteboard video. Since some of the copywriting were provided by the internal team, It is more helpful to create the storyboard.

Storyboard for first presentation

Inking while enjoying this delicious Rum Regal Milk

Inking & Digital Storyboard.

To be able to check and re-check all the copy and subtitle text with the internal team, I transform the sketched storyboard into digital file. I use google sheet to share it online with the client's inhouse department. But before that, the sketches need to be inked, so I use drawing pen and then crop edit them in Photoshop.

To be honest, my favorite part of drawing this storyboard is to ink them :D Because it always gave a volume and some boldness to my drawing. Not to mention, I could correct some of the line or add more detail with the black drawing pen. Here are some of the work in progress photos.

Such a good cafe to work in, lovely sun lights

Online Digital Storyboard - Google Sheet

Vanilla Concept

FINAL DRAWING AND SCREENSHOTS

Final Sketches.

Now it is time to put the storyboards into a detailed drawings. I drew them in a bigger size of paper, so that later when it needs to put digitally, the image resolution will still in good quality. These were some of the screenshots of the second presentation preview for the client.

Final Drawings in Pencil

Final Drawings in Drawing Pen

Final Inked Drawings.

The total sketches are around 60-70 drawing scenes, and it need to be inked for a later process in Adobe Photoshop. To animate them in After Effect, I organize the .psd composition first in photoshop, by layering every necessary parts for animation later on. Here are some of the drawings and After Effect screenshots.

Digitally colored drawing

Final Previews.

Here I showcased some screenshot of After Effect work in progress, to show how I used puppet pin to animate the character and other movement necessary. I also include two short previews of the final animations. You could see the full version here.