Characterful Animation: The Drum’s ‘Do It Day’ Event: The Animation Guys

A characterful animation, awareness explainer video for an annual creative event held by global media platform, The Drum.

The Brief

The Drum is a global media platform and Europe’s #1 marketing news website. Every year, they hold an event called ‘Do It Day’ which brings together marketers and creatives to support brands and charities by creating social good campaigns. Due to the many layers of the event, The Drum approached us to help them promote Do It Day and explain how the event works as simply as possible.

Our Response

Do It Day’s primary audience are people in the creative, marketing and tech industries, so it was important our animation appealed to creative minds.

Working with a script that outlined the event’s concept, we came up with a loose, hand drawn aesthetic that featured minion-like characters, which we dubbed ‘Druminions’.

These fun, energetic characters were designed to match the visual language to the friendly verbal language in the script. The illustrations and environments were sketched up by our creative director then handed over to our talented team of animators to bring the 90-second characterful animation to life.

The illustrations and environments were sketched up by our creative director then handed over to our talented team of animators to bring the 90-second animation to life.

Do It Day Leaflets

Following the animation, we worked closely with the drum to expand the collateral surrounding the video & marketing campaign. This meant using the distinct characters and style that had been established in their success marketing campaign by producing bespoke printed media. To see some stills from one of these pieces of media, scroll through the carousel on the left.

Combining printed media with a video marketing campaign allows for added exposure & support surrounding the campaign. We helped bring the unique style of the video into a printed form. This enabled The Drum to reengage their audience in multiple forms and channels. By linking together all the supporting media, it helped to reinforce the message in the creative minds that the campaign was aimed at.

The Result

The animation was used to promote Do It Day events in London, New York and Singapore. The characters and illustrated assets we created were used to brand the events and produce a wide range of advertising materials. In addition, ten short animated adaptations were created for The Drum’s social media channels.

What our client Said

We gave The Animation Guys an idea, they not only delivered they excelled at the task at hand! With their extraordinary creative ideas and regular updates throughout the process, their professionalism and fun nature made it such a pleasure to work with them.

Talloulah Matthews – THE DRUM