A decentralized ecosystem that enables the self-employed to thrive. Blue Whale wants to empower the freelance community by rewarding the self-employed with a fair share of the value they create.
Challenges
We were approached by Sean Chua and Ryan Chew, Director of Business Development and Strategy (Singapore), with the task to create an explainer video for the general public. It aims to give them an overview on how they are planning to address the problems in the freelance and gig economy today. The key challenges to overcome were:
- Explain the idea in about 2 minutes or less.
- Fast turnaround, as they were expecting to present the video to business meets and ICO listing sites.
- Understand Blue Whale’s whitepaper and try to focus the basic challenges faced by worldwide Freelance and Self-employed community.
- Highlight the solution provided by Blue Whale and their features in a simple but effective manner.
- Embrace the existing color and style-guidelines and lead the art direction accordingly.
- They expected the final video to be engaging, effective and have a CTA (Call to Action).
Our Solution
Based on the initial documents : Whitepaper, Style guides, and the script,
we easily picked their main pitch points and formulated a solid work-plan to accommodate the whole process within the given deadline. Next, we scheduled few voice calls with their team and discussed various points to highlight and about the art direction. Since we have an in-house technical team of Web Developers and Designers, we understood their Whitepaper and core-message in no time.
Detailed Process Insights
1.Script :
Blue Whale came up with an existing script and some rough ideas, but the challenge to fit it in 2 minutes or less, required trimming and polishing of various sections.
During the discussion, we collaboratively decided which sections are most important to highlight. Since the attention span of a common internet user is only limited to 6 to 8 seconds, we made sure to keep the opening part straightforward to current problems of Freelance and Self-employed community. The script was structurally layered into problem statements, solutions, Blue Whale pitch, their features and call to action. Various objectives were placed in the following order:
2. Voiceover:
Blue Whale team wanted a young voice in US English accent, with a lively tone. Although they did not have any specific preference over gender, we provided various Male and Female artists’ samples to chose from. They liked one and we got it recorded straight away. At the later stages, they even asked us to alter a few lines which we quickly provided.
300 words script = 2 minutes of voiceover*
( *approximate, read in a conversational pace )
3. Direction:
For the first 40 seconds of the video, we highlighted the existing problems in the Freelance and Self-employed community through a series of scenarios.
We started with the logos of already-known freelancing platforms and service providers, which would make the target audience to feel connected from
the very beginning. The whole video was aimed to be a seamless flow of various sections through smooth transitions.
Each scene is placed sequentially in such a manner to which a viewer can easily relate, and understand that the existing solutions are outdated now. And then can welcome the solutions provided by the Blue Whale.
As for the art style, we tried to combine the technical world of ICO / Blockchain technology and the current trends of minimalist designs. Everything we’ve created is an extension to the Blue Whale existing brand and style guidelines. We envisioned a mix of bold illustrations to stand out with the competitors yet keeping the whole video simple and easy to grasp.
4. Color Palette
We followed Blue Whale’s existing color swatches for the various background and foreground visuals. The main idea was to keep it in line with the existing brand.
But since the story involved various characters, backgrounds elements and the existing logo-colors of established brands, there was some window of opportunity to bring the similar colors shades with the original palette. And it all complimented each other in the end.
5. Character Designs
Due to the extensive demographic audience, we decided to make the characters, neutral in personalities irrespective of any particular location. There was a mix of genders with each character given a unique personality.
6. Designs/ Artworks
With the help of the above color and style guidelines, we started illustrating different moods and working environments of the self-employed community.
For inspiration, we followed various freelancing sites and similar business platforms and came up with these artworks.
7. Animation
Blue Whale team already liked the illustrations, and they were expecting the same with the animation. We synchronized the visuals over voiceover and music.
The transitions were made seamless by taking one element and morphing it into a new object for the next scenes.
We envisioned the video to be a mix of 2D motion graphics and hand-drawn animation with some elements to be drawn in the 3D environment as well.
This rendered a great blend of technical and traditional animation subjects in the end.
Recommended Reading:
Here are some more reads to dig deeper into the Explainer videos, UI/UX and App Development:
Case Study: Myriota | Explainer Video Production
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