Method to the Animation Madness

We’ve received a lot of requests on our work methodology since we’ve started Ghostbot. Hopefully this post will shed some light on it. Here's a rough step by step process in producing a single scene for an Esurance spot.

Step 1: Rough Thumbnail Story Board

Upon receiving the script, we get to work on story boards. For this phase we don’t worry too much about model, but more about how the spot flows, how to convey all the ideas within the time frame, and how to make things readable. This drawing is pretty shameful, but luckily I have the other Ghostbots to pick up my slack.

Step 2: Tighten Story Board

Once we’re happy, we all tighten them up for presentation for Phil Robinson at Wildbrain and the client. For this phase, we work on the character’s attitudes and expressions a bit more as well as background, lighting, and possible color.

Step 3: Pencil Layout

After everyone is happy, we move into layout. Here is a drawing done by Brad where he focused on making Erin and Erik as appealing as possible.

Step 4: Flash Clean Up and Assembly

We send this off to powerhouse Kris Toscanini. She cleans up the art and separates them into elements to be animated in flash.

Step 5: Animation and Final Tweak

When we animate, we spend a lot of time trying to get everything to flow between each scene. We vary our timing and motion and angles, so things stay fresh and lively. For Esurance we tend to animated very subtley because of the nature of their designs. If you move them too much, it tends to look very “flashy” or if you over do it, it can easily look like a bunch of midgets in an Erin suit.

The final touch.... Roque adds bg, color tweaks, lighting effects and anything else we can think of to punch up the spot as much as possible.

Viola! You can check out the final product here.

Hopefully this sheds some light on how we do things at Ghostbot. Either that or I've totally confused all of you!