a little while ago, we added an animated video to our homepage. replete with monsters and robots, it gives a quick rundown of mapbox - our services, skills, and products. i had a ton of fun making it, and i want to share a little bit about how it came together. we're all about being open, after all.
when i first started, an entertaining and engaging video was first on my to-do list, so saman, eric, and i sat down and hashed out a storyboard, discussing the main concepts we wanted to emphasize. visually representing the points we aimed to highlight took some trial and error, so everything started on paper - specifically notecards on which we had quickly drawn the ideas for each individual shot.
we set to work arranging shots into cohesive scenes that flowed from one to another. after locking down the story, i got to start doing my favorite part of an animated project: everything.
more specifically: designing characters.
colorful, furry monsters? yep. beer drinking robots? sure. mustachioed, tie-wearing aliens? uh, of course. ask a creative person what work they're most proud of, and i can almost guarantee they'll tell you about projects where they were given free reign to go nuts and make something fun. i hope it was obvious from the video, but that was certainly the case here.
initial sketches become refined assets (vector assets in this case), refined assets become characters, characters are digitally puppetized, allowing me to maninuplate their arms, legs, tentacles, etc., over time, otherwise known as animation.
seeing your characters come to life through the animation process never ceases to excite me. sure, it can be a bit labor-intensive, but most projects you end up being proud of usually are. i mean, you are giving percieved life to a bunch of static elements. it's a labor of love kind of thing.
each scene was constructed, animated, watched, adjusted, rewatched, readjusted, and then cut together. timing is crucial - it's one of those underlying principles that typically goes unnoticed unless it's not quite right, so almost everyone at MapBox had a look at the video before it was released. i added the audio (cut specifically for this project by our own Ian Villeda), pushed the 'render' button, and cracked a celebratory adult beverage.
as my first major project here, this video helped me understand the care and pride everyone here has for the things they produce. i'm excited to count myself among them, and i can't wait to see what we come up with next.