History Promo - The Ultimate Guide to Sounding Smart

This is gonna be just a short little blog post for a short little project. Specifically, a fun little animated promo for the History Channel's show, The Ultimate Guide to Sounding Smart.

The other day I was looking at my AIM contact list and I noticed my awesome friend, Elaina, was online. It's been years since we caught up, and maybe I'd casually mention that I was freelancing again. You know, if it came up. But after a little chit chat about what we've been up to (and she's been up to some cool stuff) she asked if I was freelancing and available for some after hours work. The project sounded like a quick and fun challenge, given the time to delivery, so I was all in.

18.75 work hours later (spread across a few evenings), design, illustration, animation, two rounds of notes, and versioning was done. This may be one of the quickest turnarounds I've had for a full 30s promo. And honestly, I loved it. One of my favorite kinds of work to do is when you just design and animate on the fly to audio, be it VO or music. It's kind of the motion graphics equivalent of gesture drawing and it's so fun.

SoundingSMART_ProRES (0;00;02;10)

SoundingSMART_ProRES (0;00;11;16)

SoundingSMART_ProRES (0;00;13;10)

SoundingSMART_ProRES (0;00;22;13)

The rad shop that Elaina is EP for is METAphrenie and I would like to say what a joy it was working for them. I have always loved Elaina's producing. She has an eye and a deep understanding of motion design and always gives me everything I need to hit the ground running. And while I didn't have a chance to really get to know Andrea and Nico, their feedback was spot on and they were rad. I can't wait to work with them again.

Studio: METAphrenie Creative Director: Andrea Dionisio Executive Producer: Elaina Porter Lead Animator: Penelope Nederlander

Studio Site: www.metaphrenie.com