Alex Wilmore, best-selling author and illustrator of children's books, presents "The Very Special Thing" the third instalment in his enchanting series of tales featuring forest creatures. Alex approached me with Tate Publishing to create a short 10 second animated promotional video, intended for display within Tate during book reading events and to serve as engaging social media content for marketing purposes.
In the story, Squirrel's collection expands, and her most cherished possession, a special acorn, risks getting lost amid the clutter. Alex envisioned the short video to capture Squirrel's personality. She would peek from the side of the screen, dash in to snatch an acorn, cast a suspicious glance at the viewer, and dart off-screen. Alex provided character poses, selected a music track, offered an endframe, and entrusted me to bring it all together.
I wanted to capture the essence of Alex's vibrant illustration style, known for its energetic, hand-painted strokes. While I couldn't animate everything frame-by-frame due to time constraints, I still aimed to maintain the hand-drawn feel and brushstroke textures. To achieve this, I used a mix of hand-drawn assets, textured strokes, and puppet-pinned elements at 12fps to bring the characters to life.
Find the book online and in the Tate Shop now!
Services
2D Animation, Render and delivery
Delivered
1 x 25" 16:9 master animation, 1 x 25" 1:1 animation
Credits
Publisher
Creative Director
Animation
Jason Roberts
Music
