Westin: Let's Rise Animation

Let's Rise

Client: Westin Hotels and Resort

In a fantastic collaboration with Digitas agency and Hocus Pocus Studio animation studio, we were asked to create a compelling short animated ad. The brief's goal was to raise awareness for the wellness features that Westin Hotels & Resort have to offer.

I had the amazing opportunity to help with art direction and work across different stages of the project, such as storyboarding and designing the final style frames.

Credits

Client: Westin Hotels & Resort (Marriott)

Agency: Digitas

Creative Direction: Rob Ferneyhough

Art Direction & Illustration: Philipa Rabbit

Animation: Hocus Pocus Studio

Music: Rich Lewis (Meduktions)

The full video

Storyboards

After Digitas shaped the story's tone of voice, I started the storyboarding process with the final script. To help me simplify this pre-production process, I used the app Boords, which proved very helpful when gathering feedback and applying amends into the storyboard and animatic across many rounds of review.

Animatic

Aligned with the storyboarding process also came the animatic. This stage was very important to establish the pace and momentum of the animation, especially with the voice-over. It helped me to identify scenes that didn't quite land, to be sure if the camera angles were right and any key shots that needed to support the narrative.

This stage also gave me an idea of the number of illustration assets I would eventually need to provide the animators with.

Character Design

Overall the iteration process of the characters went very smoothly. The client only had a few comments on the female character, specifically on her hairstyle. Then I created all character turnarounds, to give more guidance to the animation team.

Design

For art direction, I created a deck where I presented my intentions for the colour palette, illustration style, some animation references, and soundtrack options so the client could get a good idea of the look and feel that I was after.

Then I explored different outcomes of some of the storyboard frames that I knew eventually we were going to animate and ended up with a style frame that established the illustration style of the animation.