Characters aren’t just limited to your favourite cartoon movies - far from it. In fact, characters form a critical component of almost all animations, spanning everything from social media campaigns to digital advertising.
The strength of your character - and how successfully it engages your audience - can often be the ‘make or break’ factor of your campaign. Working with OK Social and our team, you can develop and evolve your initial character concept, to build a character that successfully captures your audience’s attention, embodies your brand image, and is targeted to achieve all of your specific KPIs. You will have the full skillset of our expert 2D animation agency at your disposal, with access to our full range of specialist services.
Our character animation services include (but aren’t limited to):
● Concept artwork - concept artwork is used to help develop an initial idea for a character, through a visual representation of the character in situ. This reference is designed to help the client better picture the next phase of development of the character design, and suggest changes to further refine the idea.
● Character development - we often find that brands come to us with a starting point for their character idea. So, from that initial idea, our team can illustrate and develop the character, bringing it to life with its own design style, profile, story, personality and (critically) USP, ensuring the character really stands out in the marketplace.
● Character modelling - in the case of 2D character animation, character modelling involves finalising the design and appearance of the character. This process (which follows the concept artwork step) involves illustrating the character, before adding animated movements and so bringing it to life.
● Face and speech animation - this is a notoriously complicated process, which involves giving the character animated facial expressions, and lifelike animated movements to accompany speech. This makes the character more believable and convincing, and helps to give it its personality.
● Audio syncing - as its name suggests, this process involves syncing the movement of the character with the audio recording. The animator will make the character ‘speak’ convincingly, and move in time with any cues that are mentioned in the accompanying audio.
Including a character in your animation is one of the most effective ways to boost its engagement metrics, and delivers on all your campaign’s KPIs.
The main benefits of character animation include:
● Creating a memorable asset - compared to character-less, abstract content, including animated characters will make your campaign far more memorable for your audience, and so, will significantly boost brand recognition.
● Representing your brand and its values - by working with a professional animation agency, you can create a character that successfully resonates with - and even amplifies - your brand identity.
● Humanise your business - by creating a brand character, you can really infuse your content with warmth and personality. This approach is a fantastic way to strike a new chord with your audience.
● Share-worthy content - when it comes to social media, it’s not easy to create content that convinces audiences to hit that ‘share’ button. But, with a personable and stand-out character being featured, that end result becomes a whole lot more likely.
● Amp up dull topics - with a bespoke animated character taking center stage, topics that would otherwise be drab and uninspiring can be made leagues more entertaining.
● Establish consistency - then, once your character is up and running, you can feature it across all your content. In addition to all the benefits outlined above, using a familiar face to deliver different story lines gives you the scope for endless content ideas, while also creating a strong and unified brand identity across your marketing materials.
At OK Social, we work on range of character animations for leading agencies and brands. We offer a wide range of services within the wonderful world of animation. Then we collaborate with your team to help illuminate your story, enhance your brief, and amplify your message.
At OK Social, we are 2D character animation specialists. Our teams have extensive experience in the creation of bespoke branded characters, which allow brands to reach whole new heights from their campaigns. Our animation style is renowned for its boldness and creativity, and the end results for their high engagement levels. This is because, not only do we illustrate and animate 2D characters, but our team can complete the entire animation process on your behalf.
Our comprehensive range of services includes:
● Storyboarding
● Scriptwriting
● Illustration
● Design
● Audio recording
● Voice acting
● Creating accompanying assets, such as social posts
Working on a close, one-to-one basis with our clients, we take them through the entire process of animated character design, from the first brainstorming sessions, right the way through to the launch of dynamic and captivating campaigns.
To inspire your search for your brand’s next character, we’ve shared two of our favourite examples of 2D animated characters in practice.
Sometimes, the best characters are the simplest. We created a series of social posts for Taco-Bell, featuring a new character to promote a new Click & Collect service that they were launching. We decided to keep the concept for the character straightforward and firmly on brand - and what could be more on brand than a taco? Then, for the character’s illustration style and personality, we brought in as much creativity, joy and light heartedness as possible, to reflect the dynamic approach of this youthful brand.
We recently got the opportunity to work with Ford, to create an explainer video that would demonstrate the benefits of their new Ford Focus. So, rather than outlining these benefits in a simple list, we thought we’d show these perks in practice. We developed a visual narrative and a set of characters, who could tell the age-old story of a growing family, while showcasing the value of choosing a car that could grow alongside them. Then, to ensure that the characters would appeal to all ages (and achieve a timeless, heartwarming effect) we combined crayon textures with clean vector based character design.
If you’d like to find out more about the benefits of 2D character animation, or enlist the OK Social team for your upcoming campaign, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
