Blue Gentoo are experts in designing systems for the oil and gas industry.
Blue Gentoo wanted to educate their customers on the product HydraSENS as well as attract investors. HydraSENS is a crucial tool for safety in the industry because it uncovers the buildup of hydrates in pipelines. As it was still in its development stage, Blue Gentoo were looking for a way to explain the process and benefits of their product as clearly and easily as possible. Developing an animated explainer was the best choice to achieve their goals.
The solution
The process began with research into understanding Blue Gentoo’s audience and discussions about the product HydraSENS to identify the benefits for their clients and investors. After clarifying these important values, we could start with the following steps of building the animated video.
Guiding the writing of the script
Writing a script for an animation can either be done by the client company, or I can source a specialist writer. In this case, Blue Gentoo wrote the script after a discussion about the audience and message. We had to use a language that was familiar and relevant to the audience, while remaining clear and succinct.
As the product HydraSENS was relatively complex to explain, we decided to use a voiceover instead of animated text, to increase the amount of information the animated explainer could convey. It is important to make this decision before developing the script because of the content and its length – a general rule of thumb is around 120 words per minute of animated video if you’re using a voiceover artist.
Creating a storyboard
Storyboarding is one of the most detailed and collaborative aspects of creating the animated video, as it is very important to ensure the final explainer video shows exactly what the audience needs to see.
Sketched storyboard
I discussed with Blue Gentoo what is important to display in each sequence of the animated video. Quick sketches are made to represent a rough storyboard which is an ideal basis to discuss the framework of the explainer video.
Graphical storyboard
Every image and its purpose is discussed with the client before colour and graphics are developed. A graphical storyboard is the next step, which displays the final graphical style and colour scheme. Before going into the animation process, we had a final discussion to make sure that every image was exactly what they wanted to show in the animated video. Being clear on what the purpose of each image holds is very important in allowing the process to be as quick and simple as possible.
Once the graphical storyboard had been agreed and finalised, the graphics were animated to create a rough version of the animated explainer.
Developing a graphical style, colour palette and typography
Looking at Blue Gentoo’s brand and key visuals on their website, I developed an overall theme and graphical style which represented the overall company and explained the product with complete clarity.
The colours incorporated into the explainer video came from the company’s colour palette being blue, purple and orange. Any other colours were chosen to complement the corporate colours.
The typography used in the animated video is the company’s corporate font that they use for all of their marketing materials. In some sections, it was important to show key messages to the audience for their better understanding and visual memory.
Voiceover and music
There are two options for voiceover: hiring a voiceover specialist or using someone in the company as the voice for the animated explainer. Blue Gentoo decided to let a member of the team volunteer to record the voice which gives the advantage of changing parts of the voiceover easily, if needed.
Even though this animated video used voiceover, we decided to integrate music into the background. There were two outcomes on adding a positively upbeat music bed: The viewer was emotionally uplifted while watching the animated video and he or she is more likely to keep watching as this explainer video needed to be 2.5 minutes long.
Once the voiceover was done and the choice of the music bed was made, both were synced with the visuals to create a seamless animated video. Blue Gentoo used this animated video in presentations to convince investors and on their homepage https://blue-gentoo.com/.
