ANIMATION DESIGN

SEVERE WEATHER MEETS SEVERE CONGESTION.

Summer is full of great things but can also bring plenty of challenges along with it. In this safety PSA, I went for a drastic mood changing animation to convey how quickly severe weather and increased traffic can put a damper (real and figurative) on your summer driving.

This collage of incredibly detailed stock rain, lightning, and water stock footage lent itself to a cool color scheme, which contrasted sharply from the opening scene I scripted. As with any of these assignments, the key here was to create enough of a bright, dynamic look with well-timed motion to hold the viewer's eye long enough to communicate the entirety of the message.

This was one of my favorite animations to date, and I believe it holds together well and delivers on being both unique and information-rich.

A NEW SPIN ON AN OLD CLASSIC.

Part of my job at Crete Carrier is to come up with clever ways to communicate safety PSA messaging to our drivers. For this assignment, the primary safety message was a reminder to move over when approaching stopped or impaired traffic.

As I began to concept this out, the phrase "It is better to be safe than sorry" kept cycling through my head. Creative juices now fully flowing, I harkened back to one of my favorite board games as a child, the classic board game "SORRY". Rather than place the token game pieces on the game board, which are known for leaving destruction in their wake, I decided to treat the board as a road and replace the pawns with traffic.

I found a photo to reference of the beloved game board and then proceeded to create one from scratch in Illustrator. I dropped in some vehicle vectors into a layered Illustrator document and brought the whole lot into After Effects, keeping each layer animation editable. Using the basic keyframe movements of position, scale, opacity, rotation, and a couple of masks, I was able to add a clever dynamic to this road safety metaphor.

EMBRACE THE VALUE OF CONVERSATION.

Driver recruitment is a never-ending endeavor in the trucking industry, and Crete Carrier is no exception. To this end, a referral incentive was established to reward current drivers at Crete to peer recruit. For each referred driver that is hired, that Crete referring driver receives a bonus and an additional bump to their mileage pay for every mile their referred driver drives in their first full year.

The message here was simple enough, but how could it best be conveyed? I felt that in today's world a cell phone text conversation would most likely be a driver's preferred medium of communication with their peers, so I took that idea and ran with it.

I wanted to as closely as possible mirror the texting visual of an iPhone, from the scrolling dots to the blue and gray text bubbles. Success with these animations is in the little finite details - even if I might be the only one who notices at day's end.

PROTECT YOURSELF FROM WINTER'S PERILS.

Winter is a tricky time for all of us on the roads, but it can be especially difficult for truckers. This message was meant to preach driver preparedness for both themselves and their truck - well before the first snowflake flies.

Many of these animation PSA's are very topical. This one lays out the importance of proper footwear, reliable tires and lights, and taking extra time when driving on treacherous roads, ramps, and bridges.

Once again, the messaging here is straightforward, which left the executive of said message up to me to convey visually. I decided to portray the scene as if we are looking through a dashboard window, with the windshield wiper used as a reveal and transition tool. Several hours were spent animating masks in this composition, but I was really happy with the end result!

ALWAYS EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED.

Situational awareness is a broad concept that lends itself to many different design paths. My blank slate approach here was to literally zoom in from a "10,000 foot view" on safety into a "rubber meets the road" example. I also had some fun with the freeze frame and fade to gray with colorization on the emphasized areas to really drive home each point.

This safety PSA - as well as the others in this lineup - are posted on our Driver's Lounge TV's, which are reserved exclusively for direct driver communication. I manage these devices across all of our 20 locations nationwide, and work to keep all of the messaging and visuals fresh, meaningful, and accurate.