This was one of the first projects I worked on after starting with the Superior Court. Following their existing process, I began animating the concept based on a basic storyboard submitted by the Financial Planning Office, the department that had requested the video.
Motion Graphics | April, 2020
Vacancy Savings Dashboard
Explainer Video
Created for the Superior Court of Orange County
My Role
Visual / Multimedia Designer
Tools
After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator
Timeframe
3-4 Weeks
Problem
The Financial Planning Department of the Superior Court of Orange County needed a way to easily explain to other entities how they track employment vacancies, minimize expenses, and realize savings.
Solution
Create a short, animated explainer video that outlines the features and highlights of the Vacancy Savings Dashboard to be shared internally within the Court and with external entities.
Background
This video was one of a three part series titled 'The Financial Data Mart'. Each video explained a new Power BI tool created by the Finance Department.
I had an idea for the overall theme, created the scene below in Illustrator, animated it in After Effects and pitched it to the stakeholders in the Finance Department for what the Data Mart could look like - a stylized store or 'Mart' on the beach. Their feedback was they thought it was too illustrated and they decided not to use it.
I had an idea for the overall theme, created the scene below in Illustrator, animated it in After Effects and pitched it to the stakeholders in the Finance Department for what the Data Mart could look like - a stylized store or 'Mart' on the beach. Their feedback was they thought it was too illustrated and they decided not to use it.
The concentric shapes in the intro sequence are ellipses with animated trim paths. The outer dashes are ellipses with a stroke and dash added to the layer which also have an animated trim path to make them appear at offset times.
Before I could animate the Court's logo however, I had to redraw it in Illustrator. Prior to this project, they only had a very low resolution PNG image of the logo they had been using for their branding. So I cleaned up the image of the original courthouse, recreated the text in a vector format, and animated all of the assets using scale techniques in AE.
I then set about creating the pie chart and other assets in Illustrator and imported them into After Effects for animation. I also used sound effects to enhance the appearance of the graphics as they entered and exited the screen.
Below is the AE dashboard as I was working on the vacancy savings monitor. The stakeholders noted part of why they liked it so much was its similarity to a heart monitor. They felt it accurately represented how they stay on top of the 'pulse' of the vacancy rate.
Below is the AE dashboard as I was working on the vacancy savings monitor. The stakeholders noted part of why they liked it so much was its similarity to a heart monitor. They felt it accurately represented how they stay on top of the 'pulse' of the vacancy rate.
Finally, the Financial Planning Office was using a stylized graphic of an orange as their logo. I thought it would be fun to animate an orange on screen and have it turn into their logo. This was a simple shape layer animated on a path to mimic a bouncing ball.
Conclusion
This was a great first project to work on as a new member of the Court's Media team. The Financial Planning Office loved the final animation and I quickly established a reputation within the organization for being a fast producer of quality deliverables who is easy to work with.
