Sarki the Sprayer
— ROLE
Script Editing
Storyboards
Character design
Illustration
Character rigging
Animation
Sound design
this project was produced for CropLife who wanted to promote handling pesticides safely. i edited an initial script to give it a more suitable shape for animation and finessed the dialogue with the help of subject matter experts. the brief was to create an animation that would reinforce safety messages in a way that was friendly and light-hearted. the central idea was to deliver these messages using a crop sprayer that comes to life.
i enjoyed the process of exploring different character designs with the client to arrive at a final set of characters. an additional challenge was to find a way to localise these characters for different markets. having designed four versions of the same characters, when rigging them in After Effects, these different versions were built into the rig allowing the skin colour and different regional features to be switched on and off via a couple of checkboxes and dropdown menus tied to expressions.
initial sketches
colour options
big showdown
exploring colour options
rounded out winner
Farmer and family – African markets
Revised outfits
Farmer and family – European markets
Farmer and family – Latin American markets
Farmer and family – Asian markets
i created and iterated upon sketched storyboards to gather feedback and achieve agreement and sign off before fully designing each frame of the storyboard. there were a large number of stakeholders involved in reviewing the storyboards and reaching a consensus involved getting a deep understanding of the different approaches to protective equipment and how they are applied in different regions; with this understanding it was possible to navigate the narrative and visual presentation in a way that was able to satisfy all parties. as ever this was time well spent; once the storyboard and designs were approved the animation was able to proceed smoothly with no further surprises down the line!