NCASS Animations
The Nationwide Caterers Association or NCASS for short is the UK’s only trade association for mobile caterers and street food traders. They provide quality training courses specific for caterers and has recently introduced a mobile app that makes it easier to find and manage jobs if you are a caterer or to find a perfect chef for your upcoming event.
Challenge
Create two animated videos for NCASS, the first one would highlight the benefits of taking NCASS courses for caterers and the other would promote the new NCASS Connect app.
Approach
The videos are made to be stylistically different to help distinguish one service from the other. The training video was made to look handmade, almost like stop motion animation, where the message is communicated mostly through type with supporting illustrations.
In order to make it look stop motion I had to reverse engineer it, I would animate it as usual and then later distort and offset the motion. Given the handmade style of the peace, I was quite surprised to find myself working on 3D simulations in Cinema 4D, like the confetti explosion, the unzipping flag or the certificate falling into the frame. Photographic elements were used throughout the animation, coupled with 3D effects they really add a lot of visual interest to the peace.
The second video is based entirely on illustrations and designed to promote the NCASS connect app. It had to be done fairly quick and having four character that had to be rigged and animated certainly didn't make the task less daunting. Short amount of time also meant that I had to start rigging before the designs were finalized.
I did a basic rig for every character using Duik, keeping it simple allowed us to later change certain body parts, clothes and colors without having to redo entire rigs. Later on I did a set up for eyes and blinking using Joysticks and Sliders that I used for all four characters, having to only change the mask for the eye socket.
The videos were created while working for WeAreFreak creative studio in London.