Dropbox
Capturing the creative process for Hollywood
For Dropbox Presents, a new Hollywood event for film and music creators, we developed impactful visuals to tie everything together.
Informed by real creatives that use the service, Dropbox wanted the concept to revolve around the idea of capturing and preserving the creative process.
So in this truly creative journey of a project, we played with a multitude of concepts and techniques before the final polished output was delivered. Here’s a closer look at how we went from tactile collage to hazy glass…
Creative canvas
The process was inspired by the illusion of motion in traditional animation or film, through the precise sequencing of static images.
Rather than these static assets being fleeting and transient, we instead captured and preserved each in glass, elevating their importance as part of the creative process.
Each frame of the sequence was hand-painted and rendered in a glass slice, representing individual digital Dropbox files. The images were created in a sequence to play like an animation, but instead are displayed collectively as a set.
In initial tests, we tried collating them all in one cube, but instead separated each sheet to give more prominence.
Retro aesthetics
The colour scheme nods to the retro-with-a-twist feel the team were going for. Using ‘70s and ‘80s early motion graphics as food for thought.
Exploratory design
Our explorations took us down several routes. Handmade, paper-cut, tactile shapes frozen in glass cases led us to experiments with effects like fluting and distorting, colour tests and building up scenes with multiplane effects. All of this of course needed to fit into the Dropbox world and integrate seamlessly with their iconic logo.
Credits
Services
Animation production, Concepting, Design, 2D Animation, 3D Animation, Creative direction, Production
Deliverables
3 x Key visuals (Static Illustrations), 1 x Main sequence, Animated end card, Animated logo lockup, Alternate animated sequence
Client
Dropbox
Executive Creative Director
Mike Davies
Art Director
Jim Billy Wheeler
Executive Producer
Jen Judd
Producer
Meg Shipton
3D Animation
Mikey Dowdle, Dev Joshi, Ricard Badia
2D Animation
Jose Meneses, Max Halley
Design
Sam Stoney, Jess Mountfield
