3D explainer animation created for Panasonic Avionics, designed and animated by Dreaming Fish Productions.
The client
Panasonic Avionics provides, amongst many other services, mobile and WiFi services onboard flights operated by various airlines around the world. DreamingFish have been working with the team at Panasonic Avionics for a number of years, producing various promos for their customers so we were excited to work on this new project with them!
The brief
“Being connected – as escapism.“
Panasonic Avionics were looking for a way to promote and explain the WiFi and mobile services offered onboard their customers’ airlines. Their thought was that if they could put an explainer video on the inflight entertainment (IFE) screen, this would be watched by every passenger and boost take-up of the services. The challenge with this approach is that the animation must be of a high enough quality that it could sit comfortably beside adverts for perfume, watches, alcohol and cars. The animation also needed to be generic enough that it could play on any airline with only simple rebranding and/or language changes.
The brief involved the idea of being connected enabling you to escape. We loved this idea. We all choose to connect so that we can escape from real life, from the mundane, from worry, from ourselves! The idea of ‘escape’ kick started not only the script but the look and feel of the video too.
The production
The challenge for this project was to create an explainer animation that felt premium. Explainer animations are generally 2D, but for this one we felt that a 3D animation would be the best approach. The initial mood board and concepts that we pitched featured 3D mobile devices, tablets and laptops along with images that gave the feeling of holidays and travelling. The film had to feature icons, so we thought we could design these with a metal texture in 3D space, giving them that high-end, premium feel.
Alongside the development of the approach, we worked on the script. This was to be communicated via onscreen text – the reason being you don’t then need to wear your headphones to understand the messages. “Sit back, relax and escape from it all” was a key line in the script which tied in the overarching theme. “The Escape” would be achieved by offering the most simple and accessible way to connect through our clear, informative and engaging video. We chose to open on a scene showing multiple mobile phones creating a canvas on which to incorporate images, adding scale whilst also implying a shared experience for all passengers. It also provides an impressive opening scene and creates the high-end approach we wanted. We set this against a star-filled night sky, and if you watch carefully you’ll see this slowly transition to morning throughout the video – acknowledging that planes fly around the clock. A night sky also means that the video could be simply rebranded without any need for large-scale background colour changes.
Once the script and approach were agreed we began storyboarding. When we storyboard an explainer animation, the Animation Team, in this case the lovely Josh, generally design all the assets they will need into the frames. This makes sign-off easier, as our clients know exactly what they will be getting from the finished film, but also it means that a majority of the design work has already been undertaken, speeding up the animation process.
The animation itself was relatively complex, with the 3D sections built in Cinema4D, rendered in Octane and then the whole animation composited in After Effects. Josh also designed the animation to be easily re-brandable and simple to translate to another language by creating the screens within After Effects and tracking to the 3D camera movement. The finished animation looks epic and the client was also very pleased:
“Working with DreamingFish is a real pleasure. They are great partners with a responsive and flexible team, who always go the extra mile to meet our needs. DreamingFish’s fresh and creative approach has helped us bring our Marketing videos to a new level of design and engagement.” – Panasonic Avionics
