Three highly detailed cityscapes and a focus on presenting the client as a forward-thinking expert in their field made a success of this promotional animation.

Background

For the last 25 years, Glazing Refurbishment has been providing architectural and commercial glazing replacement, refurbishment and repair services. Operating in three UK locations, the company has a unique approach in the sector by going beyond just glazing and incorporating the entire building envelope, including metal weather/parapet flashings and cladding.

Challenge

To help Glazing Refurbishment shine in the online space by producing a promotional animation that would showcase their expertise and would cement the impression that the company is forward-thinking and an authority in their sector. The animation would have to elevate the user experience of the recently updated company website and, to really enhance the landing page, the promotional animation would need to feature a cityscape that would make each location – Canary Wharf in London, and the cities of Manchester and Birmingham – instantly recognisable.

Solution

Working in close collaboration with our project partner, we delivered a series of simple and dynamic 3D animations to showcase the three locations on different pages of the website, ensuring visual consistency and strength of messaging across key touchpoints in the online journey.

After carefully considering different styles, camera angles, and how the animations would look on a website platform, we produced a total of six animations that help tell a story of expertise, seamless effort and finesse in all works carried out by Glazing Refurbishment. An on-brand colour palette of blue, grey and white allows audiences to focus on the animation without too many visual distractions.

Once the visual and animation style had been approved from a selection we had produced at the start of the project, we created the Canary Wharf animation, designing the iconic buildings of the area and incorporating moving parts such as cranes, cars and vans to add a sense of realism, and create immediate audience engagement.

With the London animation signed off, we moved on to produce the promotional animations for Manchester and Birmingham, which we evolved from the Canary Wharf one by adding more architectural detail. The iconic buildings of the centre of Manchester are instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with the urban landscape of the city – Beetham Tower, Arndale Centre, etc. – and despite the distance between them in real terms, we played with visual perspective and movement to ensure they all featured prominently in the animation.

For each location, a second promotional animation takes a closer look at a single building undergoing a glazing panel repair by an abseiling person, allowing audiences to immerse themselves in the process. Using Cinema 4D, we created a looping animation and also a small vehicles animation, then took the individual elements and placed them into the model, building up and around to create the cityscape.

For the Birmingham promotional animation we had a photographer on location to capture key landmarks in the city and give our animation design team as much visual context as possible.

We paid attention to every detail, with the animation succeeding at highlighting the stunning curved exterior of Birmingham’s Bullring building and its 15,000 silver discs catching the light.

Glazing Refurbishment were delighted with the result:

“Just wanted to let you know we launched our website and have received wonderful feedback on the animation. Now we’re really keen to push on with the projects for the Manchester and Birmingham sites right away.”