The first idea I thought of was that of the drink travelling through the body refreshing the internal organs on the way. To add some humour I thought of the idea of developing characters around each internal organ.
Another story was also presented by a group member which involved a young man running after a bus and then drinking the water to refresh himself. How this idea was rejected because we were moving away from values of the product....natural and simple. This became the focus of my next idea.
The general idea was to explore how we could bring together the elements of fruit and water. By this time, Abigail had already developed a very good poster idea along the lines of "This Lime, This Lemon, This Water". I continued along this theme.
This resulted in my next storyboard:
For the characters, it seemed obvious that I should follow the style already given to me from the labels on the bottles of This Water.
Using Adobe Illustrator, I generated the following characters as vector images:
From this starting point, the following storyboard evolved:
In my view this mixed media approach didn't work. The colours were too bright and the photos and illustrations didn't appear to fit together. Even though this approach was inspired by the Ben and Jerry's ice cream advert, I decided to take a 100% illustrative route.
The revised storyboard is shown below:
I felt that I was much nearer to my objective with this storyboard and imagery. The emphasis was totally on nature with a clean, simple design. However, I thought the hills and the tree were not suitable. This was confirmed by group feedback. It was also decided that the last 3 frames and slogan needed alteration.
The main criticism was the formation of a bottle of drink from the tree something more natural was required.
It was also suggested that the use of a pattern as a background was desirable. To be consistent with other parts of the media campaign I thought it would be good to use the same background pattern as in the poster.
At this point the background on the right had a texture which was later removed.
The bottle formed by rainwater in the previous story was replaced by the coming together of a lemon and lime from different trees. The slogan was also removed.
Believe it or not we were still not finished!!!
The problem was the tree and also having "This Water" right next to a bottle saying the same thing which is repetitive.
After some experimentation using watercolours and digital painting, we decided to make the tree from the same shapes as the clouds. Look carefully. The foliage in the tree in the next storyboard are essentially a collage of clouds coloured green! Perfect!
The final storyboard:
To remove the This Water from the final frame, I actually created two more frames. A last minute detail was also added in that we decided to have the butterfly carrying the bottle cap in a vertical way instead of horizontal way.
Reflection on the Final Outcome
I am very pleased with the final outcome to which I have contributed. It was a long process but in the end I believe that the storyboard and the TV ad animation have been faithful to the brand image and the "promise" of the product in that both are very simple. I think our objective of giving this product a "makeover" has been successful. I have also been pleased with the feedback we have received from our peers and lecturers which has been very positive.
New Skills and Working as a Group
This project has allowed me to learn some new skills. I have learnt some new technical skills from being involved with the stop motion production and also animating with already familiar software such as Photoshop. A new software was also introduced called After Effects about which I'd like to learn more in the future.
Aside from the technical skills, this project has required me to think in a more commercial way since the objective in reality is to sell a product. I have learnt more about how the work we do requires an understanding of the customer and product (Brand image, corporate values, product selling points and target market) and to really think about the objectives.
I have been lucky to have been working with this group of students. We have shared an enthusiasm for this project and everyone has contributed in some way to each of the final outcomes. However, I can imagine that if my group had been quite different, the work would not be equally shared and somebody would have to step in to make sure the brief was completed. After all in a real work situation the most important thing is to keep the client happy and to take individual responsibility.
