Google

Role - Animation, Motion Design

Made in collaboration with Graceful Monkey.

I was brought on as an animator in a small team to help produce several videos for the latest Google Pixel phone launch, this included product pieces, explainers of software and hardware and small idents.

Most of the initial design work was already completed by the company and put into rough storyboards with final artwork.

This meant I could just enjoy the animation process and only had to design any extra assets to fill out gaps when everything was moving.

There had been a couple previous animated works to show the timing and movement styles required so it was straightforward to keep the new videos on brand and tight.

There were a lot of characters to animate, so finding clever ways of re-using movements and assets was important to stick to the tight deadlines, as we were delivering a lot of videos.

This also applied to any Google specific icons and logos, which needed to be animated on brand and then reusable where possible as they recurred quite often in different spaces, such as on a phone screen or in their own explainers.

The collaborative nature of this meant splitting up files and good communication across the team, so each of us knew not to waste any extra time animating something someone else already had. It sped the process up significantly.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the animation was expanding on designs that had more freedom and little detail on how to make them move.

This meant I was able to take a little time to take apart the designs for this phone game and flesh it out further so everything moved and played like a real game might, complete with UI and scores!

It was a small detail but it really added to the scene and made it a little more unique than just showing a still image on a phone screen with a simple effect.

Other small details were background elements that moved gently and kept the scenes alive, such as the brand shapes or the plants.

When transitioning between scenes and characters I made sure these little details were considered, even down to the drawstring on the blind swinging as the scene settled into place, or the wind blowing the leaves on the plant.

This was a fantastic project to work on, and I'm proud of the sheer amount of animations the team produced in a short amount of time.

I was grateful to be called back for more Google series with the studio over the years following this.