Brand illustrations
Dignio
Working closely alongside the team at Bielke&Yang, we created an animation to introduce viewers to the Dignio brand. As the only illustrator, my role was to come up with a visual style for the short video.
1.
Thumbnails
Once briefed, I started sketching out compositions for the key scenes. Due to the relatively short timeframe that these had to be made, I aimed to keep them simple yet dynamic.
The client wasn’t particularly fond of the super flat styles often found in this sector, and wanted to give the impression of some perspective.
2.
Character design
Alongside the thumbnailing stage, I started to work up ideas for how the characters could look. Using relatively well-known celebrities as our guide, I came up with our key cast.
Initially, David (our main character) was loosely based on Keith David and T-Michael Bergen.
The goal was to create an older yet sophisticated character. He started out a bit younger in earlier stages of development, but we increased his age to fall more inline with the demographic of the app users, adding wrinkles and more pronounced jowls further down the line.
3.
Roughs
Once I had all the bits together, I presented this stage of the project to the clients, giving two options for each scene.
4.
Colour roughs
With a brand palette already in the works, it was important that the animation felt part of the same family. We adhered closely to the key tones, only adding a few additional colours to make the palette more flexible.
I also didn’t want to overwhelm the viewer with every colour available, so we aimed to keep scenes within a certain group to keep the focus on the characters.
5.
Sketches
To make sure everyone was on the same page, I provided a set of tight sketches which would be more representative of the final illustration.
At this point, I thought it would be beneficial, not just for myself but the animator too, to create a 3D model of our main character, David. Some sketches were struggling to consistently show how he looked, so I revisited some of the more difficult angles.
6.
Final style frames
Once everything was signed off, it was simply a case of colouring in.
Minor details were added later, such as using a dotty brush to break up some scenes with textures, and utilising reflections in the medical environments to give a sense of a more clinical setting.
Art Direction
Evan McGuinness
Client
Dignio
Bielke&Yang
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