Recurring Media Production + Workflow
This PoS Update (Proof of Stake) production was designed to fulfill a need for a media production that could be customizable with a branded “avatar” host delivering weekly news updates in a fun and interesting way like a cool “metaverse” news anchor. I facilitated the collaboration between Protocol Research, Marketing, and Illustration and designed a scalable workflow so that these animated videos could be created with accelerated production times. I also completed the entire below proof of concept production as executive producer and lead editor and animator – the only animator on the project – that’s even my voice doing the voiceover, haha 🙂
Visemes, the mouth shapes visible when characters speak, were the most challenging to sync up in a short period of time. (Western cartoon style faces just do not look right if the lip movements are not synced properly. Anime works for other reasons.)
Very happy with the final result – one of the most complex animation projects I have worked on because of the many different layered domains that make it all come together along with the necessary rapid timeline. I’m pretty proud of the magic of this production, very smooth while fun and informational. I was able to really check all the boxes and pull this one off.
To achieve the desired effect, the below viseme images needed to be turned on and off in rapid succession synchronized and matched with the corresponding voiceover according to the sounds of the words. These “visemes,” as they are called, match the shape of what real, human mouths look like when speaking in order to make characters look like they are really talking. This is the same method cartoons and other animations use to achieve this effect of characters speaking. Although software assists with a first pass of this process by analyzing the audio of the voiceover file, fine tuning it to make it realistic and truly accurate to our high production standards was an intense, manual human process.
By designing modular templates, and an adherence to cross functional team workflows, I was able to create these branded video productions to get recent news out quickly, and keep our community engaged and interested with up-to-date information in a really fun format consistent with other popular marketing strategies while still remaining fresh, different, and unique to the company style.
Motion Design
A fast-paced, high energy Social Media animation for a launch window that required another speedy turn around time.
Article Banners
Animation
The #1 “stake” GIF search result in Tenor search on Discord, made by yours truly, woo!
Merch Design
I designed this meme to be printed on T-Shirts for company employees and giveaways at conferences.
