HALLOWEEN

Universal Kids asked us to produce a spook-tacular and lighthearted custom motion graphics toolkit for their festive Halloween programming this October. They were looking for something that was original, warm, friendly, and that would feel natural alongside their IP characters.

Halloween is a truly magical holiday and we wanted to capture that magic from the perspective of a child’s imagination. In order to convey this feeling, we established a unique style that revolves around compositing illustrations onto photo-realistic backgrounds. To make these composites feel even more realistic and personalized, we would need to create custom Halloween decorations to adorn each environment. Then, diving head first into character development, we created a group of imaginative, kid-friendly monsters. We also needed to make sure that these new monster characters wouldn’t distract or confuse the audience when placed with characters from Universal Kids’ existing programming.

In the end, we were able to produce an extensive and comprehensive toolkit, including 3 bumpers, 5 IDs, and a wide array of promotional materials via Photoshop. In creating this robust toolkit, we went above and beyond the ask to deliver added value to the client and entertainment to the audience. We pinpointed areas where we could provide extra flexibility and controls that would allow the client to incorporate more of their IP into the spots. We thought it was important to build out the IDs to allow for an easy plug-and-play approach, providing an Adobe After Effects template to bring in several members of the Universal Kids family. This made better cross-promotion, audience engagement, and flexibility more accessible for the client.

With such a unique and substantial project like this one, there was inevitably a large breadth of ideation and exploration that we accomplished before crossing the finish line. In these next few sections we will take you through a little bit of our process and our journey from kickoff to completion. We like to showcase some of these behind the scenes tidbits in order to paint a larger picture of the decisions that were made and the thought processes that led us to where we ended up in the end. Below we will take a look at our character studies, art direction, logo development, and some of our initial concepts.

The concept that was ultimately brought to life in the final product was the idea we called All In The Imagination. The style of this concept was inspired by the pure creative expression in children’s drawings, with a focus on basic shapes and loose, playful line work. As you know, this concept involved creating some fun Halloween “monsters” that we felt would embody the creativity and innocence of a child’s imagination. The first step in our process for this concept was to ideate what these monsters could look like from a child’s perspective.

From the roundup of monsters that we created in this initial sketching phase, we worked with the client to narrow the selection down to 5 monsters. We then brought the selected monsters into full color and texture, shown below, giving them each a unique style and personality. The overarching intention throughout the entire character development process was to create and solidify that childlike playfulness and innocence.

Once we established the exact look for each monster, we needed to define the sizing parameters. It’s important when working with multiple characters that proportions remain consistent in every animation, in relation to the other monsters and their surroundings. Creating a character lineup, like the one below, was crucial in ensuring this consistency.

After creating our sizing guide, we then dove into how the monsters would look wearing various Halloween costumes. We wanted to explore both stereotypical monster tropes and also some costumes inspired by the Universal Kids IP characters. The results of this exploration are shown below.

This unique style required us to composite our illustrated monster characters into photographic backgrounds. In our case, the photos needed to be kid-friendly and mundane enough to keep our monsters as the main focus. The backgrounds we were looking for needed to check the following boxes: they should feel lived in, but not too messy; there needed to be space for characters to exist and interact; the backgrounds should have depth; and there should be breathing room to allow for custom Halloween decorations and type treatments. Here’s a look at some of our exploration and how stock images ultimately played out in the final look.

The Universal Kids logo is fun, bubbly, and pretty iconic. For this Halloween themed toolkit, we were in need of an equally fun, but super spooky version. We wanted to retain the overall spherical shape, but then see how we could bring some Halloween and monster inspired designs into that form. It ultimately made the most sense to continue with the trend of monsters so that this logo would fit in seamlessly with our newly developed characters. You can see the process behind these decisions play out in the frames below, as well as the final furry creation.

In addition to reimagining the Universal Kids brand logo, we were also asked to create a secondary “Come Play” logo that could be used in the IDs. This new logo still needed to incorporate the main Universal Kids logo within its overall lockup, along with the “Come Play” messaging. Since this particular logo was going to be used for a more specific purpose, we needed to show how it would look as if it were carved into a pumpkin that our monster characters were decorating.

Before arriving at the direction we took with All In The Imagination, there were two additional concepts that we explored for this project: Playing With Paper, and Mixed Commotion. We’ve shared a bit of that ideation, which ultimately helped to inform our decisions throughout this process, in the sections below.

In our first concept, Playing With Paper, we planned to showcase different, more friendly scenarios of stereotypical Halloween ghosts and ghouls. Taking a slightly more refined approach to arts and crafts, this style used cut paper to materialize the curiosity within a child’s mind. Introducing depth and subtle textures would create a more realistic, tactile experience, that could bring even the wildest ideas to life.

Our second concept for this project, Mixed Commotion, revolved around classic Halloween symbolism and how we could transform and simplify those objects into icons. The underlying idea here was that we would find interesting and playful ways to transition and morph between each of these icons. Originally we intended to make these icons entirely illustrated, and very childish stylistically. While the idea of circular, transformative transitions between icons carried through the lifespan of this concept, we also wanted to think of ways that we could bring more visual interest into this look.

Moving away from a strictly illustrative style, we chose to bring elements of different styles into the design. Leveraging a variety of mixed media, both 2D and 3D, this look would “personify the spooky.” We planned to transform the Universal Kids logo into different shapes and characters, with emphasis on all the different feelings and personalities associated with Halloween - cute, happy, spooky, gross, crazy, etc. This concept went a little further into development, so we were able to build out more of what we envisioned for the logo, IDs, and end pages.