We are proud to present the work we did for The Phoenix, whose mission is “to build a sober active community that fuels resilience and harnesses the transformational power of connection so that together we rise, recover, and live.” We are grateful for the opportunity to help this important organization and community grow. We worked with The Phoenix to create 4 different onboarding animations that play on their new app to help recruit and train volunteers, both in English and in Spanish. Here is a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Script

The Client came to us with a lot of great ideas and background information that they wanted to consolidate into these 4 videos. Our job was to condense it down and explain the volunteering process through stories that the audience could relate to– that’s when Sara and Jordan were born!

Research

In order to take on this giant task (a total run time of almost 7 minutes with one batch in English and one batch in Spanish) we needed to think creatively about how the animations would work both efficiently and elegantly, and before long we landed on the graphic novel / motion comics visual style. We did a bunch of research to see how these types of projects tend to be laid out and move so we could really highlight that in the animations– starting research even before the storyboarding phase to ensure this was thoughtfully integrated into the project as a whole.

Here are some of our motion graphics inspirations:

Spider-Man & Iron Man In… Training Day
Florence Trailer
Mahabharata Art

Watchmen

An additional challenge was making videos that would be integrated into the Phoenix mobile app in portrait orientation, but once we made the adjustment (both in the animation programs and in our minds) we were able to run with it.

Storyboards

Once we nailed down the visual look and language we dove in and storyboarded. Here are two fun sequences:

Design

The Client came to us with a color palette and logo, but beyond that we had a lot of freedom to play and experiment and that included designing a user interface as well as the characters and their world. Here are some of our favorite designs:

Animation

We worked with wonderful voiceover actors and before getting these out the door we added music. Here is Episode 1, fresh out of the oven and ready for volunteer orientations! To check out all of the videos, head on over here.

This project challenged us to work in new and exciting ways and we are so happy to be a part of the great work that The Phoenix is doing. For all things The Phoenix, check out: https://thephoenix.org/