Project Overview
As part of the team at Marvel I edited, animated, motion designed, and sound designed numerous comic-book trailers as part of ad campaigns to promote upcoming IP, new title releases, huge storyline shifts, and sales.
At Marvel I was able to work with IP such as, The Avengers, X-Men, Spider-Man, Deadpool, Captain America, and Ironman. It was an honor for myself to work on these projects but also demonstrates the trust which was placed in me to take care of, and push forward, some of the most valuable IP in the world, at one of the most valuable brands in the world.
I also worked on more traditional video projects including brand partnerships and artist highlights.
All of these projects were customer / fan facing and some received and collectively received millions of views on platforms like Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok.
The workflow on these projects was quite involved. I would receive a rough story outline for the trailer, some suggestions on which art work they'd like to use, and some copy.
I'd start by laying out the inks (the flat artwork without color) on the timeline, getting the order of the shots correct, timing everything out, finding the right music for the mood we wanted to portray, roughing in the copy, and adding some basic sound effects.
I would also begin to plan out what would be animated in each image, which characters, what the camera moves would likely be, what sort of effects I would need to create to bring the images to life.
After the rough cut was hitting each beat, the art selection and music was working, and the trailer was on track to achieve the desired goal, and once we received the final colored artwork from publishing it was plan to put on the producing hat.
"Okay, first off, I have to say that I love all of the animation of the running figure. Good use of the typography, too. And good music."
- Publishing, Marvel Entertainment, comment on reviewing my work on the X-Manhunt Trailer.
As the lead motion graphic artist on these projects I was responsible for making sure all the artwork was prepped and ready in time to achieve each deadline. This involved coordinating with the Marvel art support team, and other motion graphics artists. It also involved providing a detailed action plan on exactly what I would like to animate and how I would execute on that.
The preparation for the art was intensive, we'd cut out each part on the page we'd want to animate such as arms, legs, energy blasts, and for every character we'd want to move. we'd redraw in the backgrounds and limbs where I needed to so as to not leave any black holes in the frame. And while I'd have support from the team I would prep a considerable portion of the artwork myself as well. The prep for the art was the most time consuming aspect of these projects.
Once the art work was prepped and ready for animation I would bring it all into after effects and begin. My personal style involved a lot of 3D camera moves around the scene, building energy and drawing attention to the most important aspects.
This is all comic book art and not drawn with animation in mind. So it was important to animate the characters believably. To achieve that it's important to understand the principles of character animation, how the body moves, and how over-emphasis and exaggeration actually makes the animations look more believable.
The titles I always created from scratch and instead of being plain somewhat boring text, it was important for me to create title designs that would elevate the project, fit the IP, and add to the emotional and thematic beats of the story. I used a variety of tools and methods to create these and often went through a long and iterative process.
The goal is always to bring these characters and stories to life, create an entertaining experience for Marvel fans, and drive engagement with Marvel's considerable IP, but
at the end of the day these are trailers, made with a specific purpose in mind, to drive sales to Marvel's world-class entertainment products. And we totally achieved that goal.