2020 Lantern Award Winner

This 3D industrial animation took home the trophy for the B3 Animation (2D or 3D) or motion graphics category at the Houston Lantern Awards in 2020. High quality animation is an obvious way to help drive sales for your high-tech oil and gas tools, but having an award winning 3D product animation opens up so many more opportunities to engage your audience through views, likes, and shares.

What’s the big idea?

Check it: we made a 3D industrial animation about 2D technology transitioning to 3D technology. If that’s not peak meta, we don’t know what is. The challenge for this product animation was visualizing elements that the eye can’t see—sonic waves, concentrated data, places where hydrocarbons *might* be present in rock. By creating a light, bright contrast to the below-ground setting, we generated fresh excitement around far-field metrics.

How a 3D industrial animation will make you rich

Do you spend a significant amount of time trying to explain the inner-workings of a machine and complex processes? Unless you’re a very quick talker or have a master’s degree in MS Paint, you or your sales team may not be equipped with the right tools to sell your equipment. A picture speaks 1000 words, but 3D animated video achieves what words and images just never will:

• We can show the impossible. Industrial equipment and processes are complicated. We physically can’t show how most products work with practical live-action film, especially if they’re thousands of feet underground like this sonic scanner industrial animation we did for Schlumberger (now SLB).

For most industrial or highly technical equipment, customers NEED to know how the product works and its key benefits before they will make a purchase. Oftentimes the only way to effectively do that is through 3D product animation.

• We can make it mesmerizing. In real life, we can’t have exploding rock formations floating in space, or have bad-ass glowy orbs to help draw in a crowd at a trade show. The “trick” to creating a compelling 3D industrial animation is to simplify and stylize the story so that the visuals are as beautiful as the story is clear.

The better-than-perfect renders that are achievable with 3D are unobtainable any other way. Creating memorable content through 3D animation boosts audience retention, can engage your audience, and build brand awareness. Having a clear story that is beautifully told will increase your audience retention rate, which means more people will pay attention, stay engaged, and be watching your video all the way through.

So how did we do it?

Step 1 – Script and Audio

The script is the lifeblood of your animation. Without a solid story and efficient script, the whole thing falls apart. Our technical copywriter translates all the engineery jargon provided by your subject matter expert about their baby and crafts a story that will actually sell the thing. Beyond just how it works, we answer questions about why people should care about your product, and how it will make your customers’ lives better. Keeping into consideration average view duration so that we can keep the watch time as high as possible.

With the script figured out, time to roll out the red carpet for “the talent”. Based on client direction, we host auditions to find the perfect voice for the story. Our team listens to sometimes hundreds of auditions and provides you the shortlist of the top five or so to choose from, and we handle the rest!

Music can make or break a video, so we take very special care in selecting and editing songs that help drive the story, are on-brand, and capture the specific audience you’re targeting. Like the voice over, we spend time pouring over tracks to provide you a short curated list to choose from. And we never use the same track twice.

Step 2 – Storyboard

This project is a little different from most of our work of a similar scope. Usually we create hand illustrated storyboards to get the point across without spending too much of your budget too early. This is where ideas get shredded faster than Banksy’s, so we usually work in an easy to change medium – pencil and paper. This project, however, had too many variables to list here that allowed us to cut some corners and jump right into 3D land. Using the approved script, reference images, brand guidelines, and any further direction from the client, the storyboard gives the first glimps into what this story will look like and how it will flow visually.

Step 3 – Styleframe

Giving our clients tons of opportunities to get the look they’re after is a huge part of our customer service. In order to make sure the project is going in the correct visual direction without blowing the budget, we make at least one fully realized styleframe to show our clients what the final result will look like.

Step 4 – Animatic

Now that the prep work is done, we’re ready to finally start animating. The hard part is done, and the long part begins. This is where we put our heads down and do what we said we were going to do: bring stuff to life and make your product look awesome.

I know what you’re thinking: the 90s called and they want their graphics back. That’s fair, but trust the process. Blocking in the timing and motion is the most efficient way to make sure the story is accurate and feels right.

This is yet again another opportunity for our clients to provide their thoughts and feedback on the movement and accuracy before we spend too much time making it perfect and beautiful. Here’s a snippet of how the animatic phase is presented.

Step 5 – Rendering and Compositing

When the story is solid and the motion feels right, it’s time to hit the “make it beautiful button”. Just kidding, this is a tedious and technical process where fine art meets computer science meets religion.

Our team layers on several passes of renders to make it look better than real. This is the step where your customers start thinking rocks and metal are sexy. The breakdown of this specific animation is under construction, but here’s a peak at all the elements coming together of some of our other projects!

Step 6 – Make it rain

Play this baby at your trade show and get ready to lose some personal space and see the insides of a lot of people’s gaping mouths that you weren’t planning on seeing. With or without a podium, telling your story with us will captivate the attention of your customers and potential customers in person or online.