Method
What is M.O.A.B?
MOAB was established in 2019 as a spin-off of Politecnico di Milano. The company’s origins can be traced back to the laboratory of Prof. Manuela T. Raimondi, who has received three European Research Council grants.
After a decade of development in nanoengineered stem cell niches, microfluidic bioreactors, and miniaturized windows for live animal imaging, MOAB has evolved into an industrial product.
Since 2019, MOAB has been employed by numerous customers with diverse goals across a wide range of scientific fields, including neural cells, lymph nodes, regenerative medicine, and gene editing.
The brief
Writing and storyboarding
Creating 2D assets
Previsualization
Animation
Audio
Editing and delivery
The brief
The MOAB communication team commissions us a promotional and informative video about their product. Our proposal is creating a 2D animated video that conveys technical information in a more easily digestible format. (The reference we’ve agreed upon is the famous YouTube channel: Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell.)
Writing and Storyboarding
The first phase involves writing the script, which will be a collaborative effort between the MOAB communication team and the responsible individual. During this phase, it’s essential to efficiently and engagingly condense all the information.
After that, we move on to creating the preliminary storyboard.
Creating 2D assets
The next step involves creating all the 2D assets in Adobe Illustrator. During this phase, it’s essential to keep in mind how these assets will be animated to ensure an optimal layout for the subsequent stages of the production pipeline. This careful planning will help streamline the animation process and maintain consistency in the visual style.
Previsualization
Creating a preview of the final edit is a crucial step, exploiting the storyboard and a proxy voiceover generated from the script using AI-based text-to-speech tools. This phase is of paramount importance to ensure the correct timing of animation for various scenes: every second of output demands a significant production effort. This step helps ensure that we proceed in the most efficient way.
Animation
The animation takes place in Adobe After Effects. Within the software, the assets are animated based on the previously generated preview, ensuring that the animation aligns with the planned timing and transitions as outlined in the storyboard. Adobe After Effects provides the necessary tools for creating and fine-tuning the animation elements.
Audio
The proxy voiceover, along with the initial draft of the video edit and the script, is sent to a professional voice actor for recording. This step ensures that the narration is delivered at a high level of professionalism and it aligns with the intended tone and message of the video. After receiving the recordings we proceed by editing audio. We collect a sound library that will fit the tone of the animation, including transitions and cartoon-style sfx’s.
After this phase we move to the mixing and delivery stage.
Editing and delivery
The individually animated scenes are integrated into the video edit based on the previously generated preview. During this phase, transitions between scenes are added to ensure a smooth flow and cohesive storytelling. DaVinci Resolve is the tool used for this process, as it’s a powerful video editing software that offers a wide range of features for fine-tuning and enhancing the final result.
