Piñata, the world’s first platform to reward renters, turns rent day into rewards day by celebrating rent payment with Piñata Cash and gift cards to spend at local businesses.
Contracted by brand strategy/digital agency TinyWins, I was tasked to create multiple animated snapshots for the project’s case study. This included a product sizzle video of about a minute in duration.
Front & back design of a Piñata debit card, created in Cinema 4D using physical renderer.
The original design of this snapshot included a static still image of the debit card. While the card design was beautiful, I spotted an opportunity to implement dynamic motion and depth to better catch the attention of the viewer. The result was a sexy, eased rotation of the debit card with a reflective brushed metal texture that was loved by the client.
The app screens were designed and put together in Figma. While Figma is an amazing tool for design, the assets typically need to be exported (usually as SVGs for vector, PNGs for raster images) before they can be animated.
There are useful plugins such as AEUX that does an okay job of translating assets directly from Figma to After Effects, but with version 0.8.2 of the plugin, you’d often run into problems such as not getting the right font translated and incorrect size/placement of elements. Until we get an improved version of AEUX or an alternative solution, a little bit of manual adjustment in AE is usually required.
Mascot animation
In the snapshot featured above, we introduce Max, Piñata’s mascot. He swings into frame just as the mock transfer is complete. Since the character is essentially two legs attached to a hexagonal body with a relatively simplistic motion, a full character rig wasn’t necessary.
Max first came in the form of a layered PSD. To avoid looking rigid, his legs need to swing independently of the body while still parented to it. The anchor points of his legs were shifted to the edges of his torso, where the imaginary joints should be. A wiggle expression is also applied to the rotation value of the eyes to simulate googly eyes.
Confetti animation
A combination of streaks and particles is used.
Color and particle shapes respect the brand guidelines
while simulating an organic, flowing motion of a confetti burst.
A wiggle expression is added on the position value of each individual streak, which gives the party streamers an illusion of air resistance.
Trapcode Particular was utilized for the confetti particles
to react with physics like gravity and air resistance.
Using shapes from within Piñata’s brand guidelines as custom sprites, I was able to achieve the desired effect without straying from the brand’s look.
Type Animation
A standardized type animation was required to utilize throughout the sizzle video.
Essentially we were looking for a subtle yet engaging way to present text. Through the exploration, four options were picked out and presented to TinyWins. #4, which turned out to be the team’s favourite, felt the most dynamic as the characters travel over a longer distance and slowed to a stop with a comfortable ease.
Wrap
Always a privilege to work with the talented people at TinyWins. They granted me plenty of creative liberty during Piñata’s case study creation process, and I was able to implement advanced motion techniques into the project.
Every project is a learning process no matter the scale of it, and Piñata is no different. TinyWins emphasizes on building detailed case studies for most of their work, and wastes no time in doing so right as the project wraps - a feather I can definitely take out of their book.