Brooke - Cards and crafts Demo Reel

The Brooke - Cards and Crafts demo reel is a motion graphics project I made for a client. This blog will serve as production documentation.

This project started when a client approached me with a request. She designs and makes cards that she sends to various organizations and posts to Pinterest. She wanted a way to showcase her work in a way that was unique and visually interesting, so she asked me to make a demo reel for her using my skills as a motion graphics artist.

The first step to accomplishing that goal was to come up with an idea. I wanted to make it fit with the clients overall aesthetic, so something art or craft themed. I eventually settled on a 2.5D scrapbook, as that would fit the theme and provide visual interest.

The client would provide me with 5 cards she wanted to appear in the demo reel, which I would then scan to make into a digital format.

With a concept in mind, I made a 2 column script and prepared a storyboard.

After getting the basics of the project sorted out it was time to open After Effects to create a rough animatic of how the animation would look.

While making the animatic, I took note of some issues that would come up in the final version of the animation. I was using the Cinema 4D renderer in After Effects in order to get the pages of the book to curve, but the C4D renderer also disables layer blend modes. This would prevent me from applying any textures to the book, making look very flat and boring.

The solution to this problem was Photoshop. I make a project with the exact dimensions as the layers and apply the color and texture to them, then export them as PNGs. I would then import them into After Effects, removing the need for the layer blending styles.

Final texture front cover made in Photoshop

With all my assets ready, I constructed the final animation. An unforeseen issue I ran into was the fact the texture would appear on both sides of the layer. This was fine for all layers, except for the front cover to the scrapbook, which you could see t mirrored on the inside of the book. I solved this issue by making a duplicate of the back cover, parenting it to the front cover with an offset of 1 in Z-space.

I also added the clients actual logo at the end of the animation. I changed the color to pink (The clients favorite color) and used a stroke animation to give a drawn appearance.

Clients Logo

The final part of the project was to add some music and sound effects to give the projects some more depth.

Once completed, I delivered the Demo reel to the client, who was very pleased with the result.