The Mime

by Clay

Creating a tactile feel to a technical tool, Clay reached out to me to bring 2D hand drawn animation into the real world with composited animations into their footage of a mime using their tool to find the right customers!

Project Stats

Type: Commercial
Length: ~53 seconds
Turnaround: 4 days

Crafting the Character

Taking the adorable icons that Clay have designed for their in software tools, the character had to be designed to work in a 3D space as a series of 2D drawings. The icon was re-drawn at multiple angles until the 3D form was consistent.

2D Style to Live-Action Footage

Several techniques were used to help the character feel like part of the real world. Cast shadows, even subtle ones go a long way, light matching the direction of lighting on the illustration, moving behind objects for depth and subtle camera movements tracked back into the character help situate them in the frame.

Character Interactions

Having the character interact with animated elements provided a feeling of physicality to the Claygent. This was done with a mix of footage where someone would be provided with props and act out the physics with and without them. This gave a tactile feel with all actions and animations.

To showcase the mime working and finding product to sell we had them interact with animations in a fun and physics based way!