Finishing touches...

I made my advert ready for smartphones and webpages, converting the .mov to mp4 and theora, I did this using Miro converter...

I decided that the write on Babycham logo text at the end was to fast so I edited it in After Effects to write slower...

It looks a lot better now...

I am really pleased with my final advert. I think it really has a 'handmade' feel. The only thing I would change is to add something else whilst the snow starts to fall, it lacks something there. I am glad that I added the pinecones and holly as it really brings the advert to a good visual ending, with a lot to look at. I am pleased that I picked a Christmas theme, Babycham has been seen as a Christmas drink in the past and it seems a good way to bring it back! I like the visual style in my campaign, using elements from the moving advert in the static adverts aswell keep it all together and memorable.

Billboard and magazines....

I want to keep my static adverts very similar and inline with my moving advert. I want to pretty much use the same artwork, same colours etc. I have been thinking about text to put on the adverts and decided to keep it simple with the 'handmade' style and use "Have a Babycham Christmas'. I know I want to use the same script font for 'Babycham' but its a game of trial and error with the rest of the text, ideally i'd like it all script, but that is no good for a poster as it is hard to read...
The whole process of making my static adverts was just playing around with artwork I had used in the animation, cutting some more bits up and changing things around a bit like a collage, actually that is the sort of look I am going for with the advert, a collage feel... Here are some pictures of my development work on the static adverts...

For the background, I want to keep with the textured blue..

I re did the text in Photoshop, using the stars like in the animation.


I then pretty much played trial and error and here are some of the things I came up with...



And for the magazine...




I thought of using a small babycham logo in the static adverts, but decided against it, it didn't fit with the rest of the 'handmade' style...
After all that playing around, here is my finished billboard...

I much prefer it with the wrapping paper scrunched around the bottle, I played around with so many typefaces for the text that sits with the script Babycham and I really like the sans, condensed font, the claret colour really fits in with the Christmas feel and the rest of the campaign and I actually found an old Babycham coaster and they are the exact same colours! I found this after I had chosen the colour scheme, so a bit weird, but good!

We have to place our billboard on a photo of a real billboard, at first I was going to use an image like these...


But then decided, that as it is a Christmas advert, it should be on a billboard in the snow!

Below is my final magazine advert...


Again, very in-keeping with the rest of my campaign and similar to the billboard.

Animating...

The beginning of my animation is the gift box landing on the screen, this is in time to the thud of the music. I then used all the images I took of the gift wrap unwrapping and played them one after the other, I placed the bottle underneath to seem that that is in the present.



I then made the cork burst out of the bottle and used the particle tool to create bursts of liquid coming out and off of screen. This was very tedious indeed as I have never used the tool before and kept getting it wrong! After hours of playing around with it I finally figured it out and chose a preset particle rather than my drawn bubbles, I think this looks a lot better and almost looks like tissue paper, so it is in-keeping with the rest of the animation...


Originally for the snowflakes I wanted to create one long Illustrator file scattered with my paper snowflakes and pull this down over the screen in after effects to make moving snow. I then had real problems with this as the file was so large it wouldn't save, I ended up making the snowfall 3 times in Illustrator only for it to disappear when I tried saving it!


I then started on my 'write-on' text. I used the write-on effect in after effects to create this...

Here is my animation so far...




Originally that was all I had planned for my animation, but i am finding it boring and dull in parts, specifically where it is just snow fall. I have decided to:
1 - Add more snow, in various sizes.
2 - Create an almost magical scene under the snow, with pine cones and other Christmassy things such as holly and berries. The idea for this is that the snowflakes from the Babycham is almost magical and creates Christmas spirit.
3 - I want to create sparkles on the bottle and the lettering, I am not sure how to do this yet though!

For the pine cones etc I am going to use some stop motion again, I really like the unwrapping of the present and think it could work well using it again behind the snow. I took a series of photographs of pine cones, slowly building up with holly, cinnamon sticks and berries...

My next job was to start cutting all the images up in Photoshop. This took about 5 hours to finish!

I then went the same way as the giftwrapping with putting them into After Effects. I put them in just as the snow was getting thicker as if it was the snow that were making the m appear.

I then put another layer of snowflakes amongst the other ones, I made the flakes smaller and more of them, I think it looks a lot better now.

I also wanted to make the snowflakes build up at the bottom. I did this in Photoshop by adding snowflakes around the finished still and then slowly rising the layer up in After effects whilst it was snowing, obviously removing the still from the Photoshop file so it had a transparent background! ...


I was pretty puzzled about how I was going to create the twinkling stars, but then I thought of making the still stars in Photoshop, adding them into After Effects and changing the scale of them to make them seem like they are sparkling! It worked pretty well! ...

Early mockups...

I made some basic mock ups of how I want my animation to look. . .


I really don't like the drawn box and bow! I am thinking of using real wrapping paper and maybe creating a stop motion animation for the unwrapping of the present, I will have to research this and see if it could work. I really like the script font 'Lauren Script' for the Babycham logo at the end.