Animation in Advertising

Every couple weeks I like to go through Vimeo's animation section and see if anything new and interesting has popped up. A couple days ago the studio Motion Authors posted a new short animation they had done as an advertisement for an App. The thing that was a little different about this advertisement is that it was specifically designed as a Youtube Preroll advertisement.

With everything we've learned in this course so far, I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say we all could make something similar to this advertisement without too much trouble. The designs are pretty simple and the movement in the animation isn't anything too crazy. However, what I thought was interesting was the timing.

One thing I've noticed when watching Youtube prerolls, is a lot of the advertisements clearly weren't made with Youtube in mind. Many ads that pay for their pre-roll spot, if played in a "skip after 5 seconds" context, fail to get enough of a point across so that people still know what you're talking about. They spend too long on a "catch" that most likely won't work, and fail to say what their product is. This advertisement however hits all the milestones. In the first 5 seconds, there is a catch, name of the product mentioned, and logo displayed. By the 15 second mark, we know what the product does. And of course, by the full 30 seconds we learn how its relevant to our lives.

With all these things in mind, do you think you could market yourself as being a useful member to an advertising team?



Ibotta YouTube Shorts from Motion Authors on Vimeo.

Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn

Halo 4 is here! With all the hype and excitement surrounding the latest installment to the series I figured I would share a bit of it with the class. With the release of the game, 343 Industries, the new studio in charge of Microsofts cash-cow intellectual property, has also released a series of live-action shorts to promote it. A lot of money was put into the making of this series, with some pretty interesting actors and actresses filling the roles (Anna Popplewell of Chronicles of Narnia fame!). It is written by Aaron and Todd Helbing and directed by Stewart Hendler (2009, Sorority Row, 2007 Whisper).

This is the fifth installment in the series called Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. Some of the effects are incredibly cool, but all look like they came from After Effects and similar programs. The opening sequence to this involves a really cool particle distortion which looks to have been made in Particular. At around 1:49 a firefight begins after an exploding grenade hits the front wheel. Its interesting to see the alien bullets flying around in the scene, because they are clearly edited in with After Effects. In the 4th episode, there is a lot of really interesting effects that they use with a camouflaged alien enemy. As he moves through the scene, he distorts the image just slightly to reveal his position. When he strikes, he uses a glowing energy sword that lights up just before the gore. 

Its interesting to see the direction media is taking. Multi and transmedia projects seem to be the way to go for marketing and promoting new products. We will be seeing a lot more of high budget, live-action mini-series to support video game franchises. There are a lot of really cool effects in this series and I urge anyone who is a fan of the series or is interested in seeing some cool effects in a game to film setting, it is definitely worth checking out.

The Revolution That Mattered

So some of you may know that Assassin's Creed 3, the next game from the titled series, will be coming out this month. It will feature half-English and half-Native American character Connor Kenway, an ancestor of the series' main protagonist Desmond Miles, and is set in Colonial America before, during, and after the revolutionary war where the story brings up the fact that maybe America wasn't fighting for freedom from the British but actually from Templar influence.

The reason why I want to talk about this upcoming release that has been buzzing around the video gaming world is because the marketing behind it's release is fantastic. Seriously, I've heard people get giddy over the trailers alone without ever seeing a second of gameplay. This is the Ubisoft's, the developer and producer, biggest marketing commitment in company history and even built this game to be able to be a standalone game for new people to the series. The company has even stated that in the first three weeks you could pre-order this game, they already surpassed the total pre-orders for the past two games, and the company allowed people to begin pre-ordering 7 months before the release which means that those numbers must really be staggering.

Attached below is one of the numerous videos from the marketing campaign that features a portrait of the Boston Tea Party that the camera flies into to see multiple different things from different angles, turning the 2D painting into a 3D world in itself. This choice really allows the people interested to get more flavor of the game while being submerged in the detail of the world before they could actually play and it is grand. A game that can express its story and setting using only smooth 3D animation instead of quick cuts of gameplay is really interesting and I look forward to not just playing this game when it is released but also watching more videos like this.



Assassin's Creed 3 is set to be released on October 31 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and Windows PC.