Formula One on a dirt track!

The evolution of an idea and the progress a video goes through from its initial inception through to completion is like an adventure. The initial idea of the video most often includes a story but also a metaphor. We have found that if we can build a story around a known symbol we can tell the story of the new product or difficult to understand idea feel easier for the viewer to say, "Oh, I get it now!"

One of the first concepts that we need to develop is a mental hook that grabs the viewer at the beginning and helps the individual watching the video feel some sympathy for the main character. We all have problems and challenges in life and if the viewer can feel somehow connected to the main character then we are more likely to share the cool solution we are trying to share.

This video we made at Wienot Films includes the an homage to the awesome world of Formula One racing. Each video story has its own set of challenges to overcome and one that is almost universal is maintaining all the required bits of information in the story to appropriately describe the product. There are times when these extra bits of information can easily fit within the story and times when the extra bits don't naturally fit and make what could have been a smooth quick story into more of a longer instructional video. We always try to keep videos short and a story that is as fun to watch as it is educational, inspirational and achieves the goal of the client.

This exciting video was for SimCorp had a really cool formula one race car and a few other cars that were really fun to design and draw. We are looking forward to some more really cool videos in the future!

My spirit animal, the American Buffalo.

I have to admit that I am more of a fan of the term Buffalo but it is because of the symbol of the creature and not so much the actual factual about the creature. I love that historically they had their own territory as they roamed the vast North American continent. These amazing creatures roamed from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico. Although these most powerful creatures once numbered in the excess of 10’s of millions they were once hunted to near extinction and only with massive intervention have they recovered to roughly 31,000, even if these numbers are restricted to only a select number of national parks and a few reserves. 

The sacred white buffalo “Big Medicine” represented all the sacred power of the mystic and real world around us. The buffalo symbol represents the sacredness of live and the abundance of resources around us. The buffalo is a symbol of self sacrifice and it will continue to give until nothing is left to offer. 

I love the idea of living up to the symbol of this great creature and one small way for me was to create this fun little drawing. 

The tale of two Networks

What a great video to work on with some great people. I have always enjoyed being able to throw a little homage  to other creatures and this was the perfect chance to say thanks for the work of previous animators and game makers. I think we did a pretty good job of creating a corporate video in this hand drawn style. 

Boat Ride

I don’t get to draw on the white board for every corporate video we produce here at Wienot Films, but there aren’t many that I don’t have the honor of working on initial storyboards. This video for IHS Markit was a fun quick storyboard to work on before I got to hand it off to the computer animator. I really like the look of the hand drawn video but this one is a great style. It is an amazing product for some effective marketing. 

Who’s afraid of the dentist?

We’ve had a really fun project at Wienot Films to take a previously produced whiteboard video and update and bring it up to current needs for an awesome client working his wizardry to produce beautiful smiles and reducing the pain of his patients.

I really don’t know much about what had gone into the development of this awesome technique of the good doctor but when we look at producing an explainer video or a corporate video for each and every client we have we put everything we have into its production. That’s a real mouthful to say we really put our all into each marketing video and we work hard to make it awesome and amazing.

I personally really liked working on the characters in this video to find just the right look for the girl to give her a little visual appeal while maintaining the presence of her pain at the beginning of the video!

A break in production to explain a break

Every once in a while we take a moment away from the corporate video making to do a little marketing of our own or maybe just to have a little fun. It so happened at this time we were looking at the beginning of the school year and wanted to thank those people that are traditionally working so hard to keep the kids busy and active all summer.

At Wienot Films we take a few minutes here and there to try and improve our job at producing some of the most amazing hand drawn whiteboard videos on the planet.

This little explainer video is simple a fun little view at the crazy home life of the parent at home with the kids and then the break that is required when the kids start school again! Feel free to have a watch and maybe suggest something fun for our next fun promotional video!

The Whiteboard Animation Journey

The early sketches before the storyboard can be very different than the final video drawings. This is just another fun part about the creation process. I find this an interesting part of my daily work and I have to admit that my favorite part is the moment I see the video footage I have sent to the editor edited together moving on the screen. My second favorite part but a lot more challenging is to begin drawing the rough ideas and concepts from the script.

At Wienot Films we take great care to talk to each client and ensure that we have as good an idea as humanly possible of what they are trying to express through the medium of whiteboard explanatory video. The building of an amazing script is very much not my style of fun and games but the amazing staff of individuals that work wonderful word magic take just enough time to turn out an amazing script do their job. Now I don’t want to tell you this but the script will continue to get massaged even while I work on the visuals, this isn’t because the script builders can’t ever finish rather they may be some last minute improvements the visuals will inspire so we’re always open to making it the best we can at any time. 

It is always a bit of a race to run through the various steps of storyboarding. Starting with roughs and character designs though a couple phases of storytelling with stick figures to end with a polished and approved storyboard. The final storyboard is an exciting step for me and I feel a bit of relief as a fair amount of work has been put into the storyboarding process. 

If the video is to have a look that I don’t do it will be sent to the illustrator of a more computer drawn look expertise. On the other hand, if the look we are going for is the hand drawn whiteboard awesomeness that I can do, I get to begin the laborious process of drawing on an actual whiteboard. 

After the footage has been packaged and sent to the editor, I get to relax and wait for pickups and edits and then the excitement of seeing a draft of moving whiteboard animation! A really exciting one to see come together was this SimCorp video that has some construction concepts to teach and having some actual home building construction experience, it was fun to use some of that knowledge. 

Roundee.io

Roundee.io was a great client to work with, they introduced us to a new software while we were communicating with them and we got to try it out during our conference calls. The video itself was quite fun as we here at Wienot we're 

encouraged to use humor to ensure the audience was as much entertained as being informed of the conference software. I had a lot of fun with the main character

and felt like he was modeled just a little after myself, especially some of those early mistakes he makes at the beginning of the video. Although I would never zone out or multitask during a conference call, *wink*!

Iconography /īkəˈnäɡrəfē/

One of the more challenging activities as a visual development artist for an explanatory video production company, like Wienot Films, is to invent and use as much iconography or imagery as we can to tell stories or express ideas, especially with the abstract topics. 

We try to use as few words as possible on screen to keep the viewer from having to work harder in reading words in order to understand the story. 

There are a couple of main difficulties in this process, the first is to either use the same basic icons that everyone else is using. While being easily understood it can also lack in originality or that wow factor we strive to deliver to each client while maximizing the memorability of their video. 

The opposite approach is to create a new language of icons to tell the story or explain the idea. We feel this approach runs the risk of the audience not fully understanding the concept or simply getting lost in trying to understand what is being explained and concentrating on simply figuring out what each individual icon is suppose to mean. 

It is a constant struggle, one that we enjoy taking on as we help each of our clients fulfill their dreams and desires to explain their story one explainer at a time!

Canon Whiteboard Animation Video Quest for Color

The content for this explainer video could have easily felt a bit stale, but we were able to make it a fun journey with the theme of the medieval quest. We had the wonderful assignment at Wienot Films of creating an animation that showed color advances in digital video over time. It was a little difficult to work up the concept at the beginning but once we got rolling, it was a pleasure. It is always fun to try to include a few famous people as I draw these, even if they don’t look exactly like the person or are not well-enough known faces that everyone would readily recognize them. I wonder if any film buffs will recognize the people I used for inspiration for some of these whiteboard characters.