Tips & Tricks

Credits:
Company: d8.
Animation: Me, Sarah Buchan-Innes
Design: Euan Gallacher, Paul Smith
Account Management: Rosie Street, Megan Skinner

I've had the privilege of animating several videos for Spotify's Tips and Tricks series. These explainer videos cover app and desktop UI features using a vibrant 3D style. I personally worked on 7 complete animations and assisted the motion team on others.

This series garnered 1.3 billion ad impressions and over 37,000 Spotify podcast subscribers. Truely wild to think how many people these videos reached.

At the start of each video, I sort of broke down the files the designers gave me, thinking about how each screen should smoothly transition to the next. This also helps keep the file size manageable by grouping together elements we don’t need right away. Then, I grouped the layers into 'scenes', with each scene flowing into the next.

Once I had a rough timing down (the anamatic) and the layers were in their scenes, I went ahead and worked through the piece with detailed animation. This included building any additional assets like bursts and swipes to draw attention to the key features.

The phone required a group thinking approach to get that 2D-3D look. The comps had to be stacked insided each other to achieve that flat, isometric style. But on the upside, it allowed us to keep the UI animations in one comp separate from the phone’s animations. I also grouped together the teams work in a master file, so we can reference the same assets and keep a consistent brand style in each one. Pacing was important to keep people engaged while also showing the UI clearly too.

All in all, it was a real eye-opener on the importance of planning what’s needed first before diving into the files and animation.

Here are some of my favourite animations I got to work on.