Family Portrait Commercial

Below is a commercial created by United Studios, directed by Harrie Verbeek. We drew storyboards for it.

Menzis Illustration Process

Ape Scribbles
We start by throwing many little ideas on paper in the form of ape scribbles. Ape scribbles free us in the sense that we can just come up with a lot of visual and funny ideas very fast, which keep evolving in a direction that eventually leads to a concept.

Once we come up with a concept, we talk about it, brainstorm a bit, and very roughly sketch it our for the client.

Layout Sketch
After the concept is approved, we can start working on the visual. But maybe we need to figure some stuff out first, like the right perspective.

At first we keep layouts rough, usually with a colored pencil, so we can work out the right composition. Characters and background elements should work together to keep the story clear by complimenting eachother.

Once we’re satisfied with the basics, we can draw in some details.

Ink & Paint
Using the layout, we paint the background with pretty colors. In this case, we used Nicker paint on paper.

Characters are inked with a brush and Holbein ink. The trick is to keep the guts of the sketch intact, or even push them further.

Final visual
We scan all the elements and composit them in Photoshop. The characters are colored with the background as reference, making sure they will pop.

Final Product
Once printed, the illustration might look like this:

CareFellow Storyboard Animatic

Right at the very end of 2014 we produced this cute little animation for the CareFellow app by WhYellow.

For all of our animations, we edit the storyboard so it can be played as a movie. This ‘animatic’ gives the client a good overview whether the animation works. Is the story/point clear? Does it flow well? Do the jokes land? Since the animatic consists of quick sketches, changes can easily be discussed and worked into the edit at this stage. Only after the client approves the animatic will we produce the movie in it’s final form.

If you’re wondering what a storyboard animatic looks like, you can watch the one for the CareFellow project right here:

More behind the scenes sketches can be found on the project’s page.