The challenge of the job was to create 9 videos for 9 Christmas songs of about 4 minutes duration each, that merged into one long video. The client needed clever facial expressions and lots of interesting things going on in the background scenes to make it entertaining. This should not be just a Christmas video but should depict Santa’s entire world showing the viewer all the details of his lifestyle and hidden interesting easter eggs for the viewer, with wacky crazy things going on in the background and small magical stuff happening. In short, I was asked to create a world for Santa and his family, that was appealing to a broad audience, engaging, and friendly.
I received the client’s raw script, the lyrics, and music tracks for the 9 songs. I immediately noticed it didn’t have indications of what should happen visually. I proposed to the client that we produce an Audio/Visual script. This will give us an idea of what happens visually in each frame of the video.
So I propose the following breakdown for the work:
- Audio/Visual Script
- Character design / Style frames
- Storyboard
- Animatic
- Final animation
Based on them I created 9 original scripts representing the 9 songs. For the scripts, I imagined different situations and funny moments using several locations and characters from Santa’s world.
The next step since this was going to be a long video was to create the characters for the whole piece. For this step, I’d show the client 3 options for the main character to set the mood and correct styling.
Once the client picked an option I developed the final character turn around and created the secondary characters.
Also, I created a color key for the first video to test the color coherence throughout the whole piece
The next step was to create a style frame. This means a finished version of the characters with a representative background, that reflects the final styling of the art of the video.
I used a limited palette with a strong use of Christmas-related colors and a minimalistic style of illustration with special attention to Christmas details.
After the client approved the previous steps I started creating a storyboard for the animation. This allowed me to visualize the video, ensuring the pacing and flow were engaging and avoiding any boring or overloaded parts. It served as a sketch for the next of the animation process.
