Digital Records

for Motion Manor

The aim for this film was to convey how adult social care is becoming digital, with a paper plane flying through shots to show a quick and effortless transfer of information.

I decided to make the plane in 3D to give it a dynamic, realistic feel in a shorter time than it would take to use shape layers or hand-drawn.

I made a simple plane in C4D, with a thickness so I could apply different shades to the bottom and top layers.

I originally set up a light so that the plane could have 'realistic' shading, but with the plane moving and turning so quickly, and the posterize time effect, it simply made it look flickery so I stuck to a static shading that favoured clarity of movement.

I used a texture from the original artwork to tie it into the painterly world of the original illustrator, but kept it greyscale so I could tint and tweak the colours in AE.

I also added a tracer on a separate layer to accentuate the movement and tie in the key bright green colour used to highlight elements through the film.

The end sequence called for the plane to fly vertically through numerous scenes. I tackled this by setting up 4 x 16:9 reference images in C4D and matching the camera movement. I then roughly planned out my motion path and then adjusted the timings until the plane moved in a rhythmic way throughout.

There was also a section that required a 3D turn around a desk and a set of papers flying into the computer from the surroundings. I handled this with a mixture of 3D elements within AE and some hand drawn paper sections.

I feel this really added to the warm, tangible feel of the film and gave a lot of visual excitement.

I have loved helping to bring this series of films to life for Motion Manor, and I know the client have been incredibly pleased with the results.

If you'd like to read more about Motion Manor and this series of films, check out their main website here and the case study for the previous film here.