Sk-etchbook

We presented the final (well semi-final) piece yesterday for our viral campaign. As it is a campaign we would have been better off having some presentation boards but unfortunately we didn't get round to pulling these together. I started a generic background but we need to sift though our planning and early docs, tidy them up a bit. Just thinking about the flow now I would say the boards should go something like:

Client Brief, our assessment of and extraction of key requirements.

A written proposal detailing our response to the brief.

Justify our choice of the "funny video" medium, research into humor and elaborate on possible video options we came up with.

Distribution net diagram.

Design proposal (email & site), reasoning behind choice of style.

Walk through of site functionality.

Label mock up.

Summarize and mention benefits and any supporting stats.

Suggest future development possibilities.

As far as the project goes as a whole I'm satisfied but it could have been better in my part if the graphic layers and CSS alignment were finalized. Would have been super, smashing, great if I actually finished the functionality side of things but deconstructing the project now I realize I have added a good few hours to my flight time spent in illustrator learning vector art and faux-3D. I was going to say I didn't think I'd learnt much new in Photoshop but I have spent a while messing around so I'm sure I'll have picked up a few new parlor tricks. Functionality I did get a little stumped, I can see easily how to get the separate required elements to work but synchronizing them to work as a whole confused me as it requires rewriting the PHP processing script which is still a new language to me. Gonna keep trying tho, after all where's the fun if you don't make life hard for yourself!

Now the video part I have to admit I was a tad disappointed by. The flash animation was far too simple and some of the improvements we had previously discussed had not been implemented. We had a longer conversation after the presentation and I helped Luke resolve some of the technical and practical issues he was experiencing. The main critiques in terms of the animation are it lacks personality and character. The lack of eye or any other movement had a paralyzing, flattening effect on the fruit. This makes them just bits of fruit and the observer is unlikely to develop any emotional rapport with a bit of fruit. Hope fully Luke is going to add some eye movement or at least eyebrows and we also discussed the possibility of caricaturization ie. Groucho glasses. The're also needs to be some laughter at the end, no laughter is a dead end / humor killer, I know it's a tacky joke but it's more compelling to laugh when you're not doing it alone. Think the only other essential fix was the shadow needs softening beneath the fruit.

Now as for the 3D branding part what I have seen looks good however Crenton's been chasing doctors round for the past few weeks and been having issues getting her head round Real Flow so we have only seen stills so far. The still look pretty good from what I can tell, as usual however near the end of the project we came up with having the juice been poured over the fruit characters after the joke. This would have been much better, more consistent and funny in a random Noel's House Party-esque manner. Still too late to change all this now!

The only issue I can see is the lack of consistency between the two different animation styles. It will take some cleaver editing to get them not to look like two unrelated clips hacked together but if the negative space and simple shading remains consistent it should work. The call to action included in the video shall be something as follows, this wasn't included in the pres but it's short, sweet and to the point:

Win a taste of celebrity by
telling us what makes you Feel Good!

Go to www.feelgooddrinks.co.uk >>

Forward to a friend >>

Finally the feedback from the room was limited. The main point was we we're too vague about how the campaign was structured, I agree with this it wasn't clearly presented. The issues with the animation were covered and I think the only question I received was how the vector art was created. It's a shame really presenting work for online delivery to a room predominantly focusing on moving image. I've been building up my coding/developer knowledge, sometimes I think certain aspects of which are interesting however I have to hold back on techno babble as it often met by a sea of blank faces. Feels kinda like I got confused and turned up at a Porn convention dressed in my finest Star Trek costume!