MakeADifference

New Collaborators

The Making of an Adobe Tabletop Stop Motion Video 

We recently kicked off work with Adobe on a commercial video production series of support videos for their new Creative Cloud Express. Given how we use their software on every video, working with Adobe has been a dream collaboration.

To celebrate, we created a paper craft stop motion video to announce, and celebrate, this new collaborative relationship.

Check out the full Adobe stop motion video below and scroll down for a look into the creation process.

Here’s a little look behind the scenes of the creation process for the video.


After some collaborative brainstorming, Production Designer, Emily Mormann, took the reins on the project. She designed a stop motion that leans on Adobe products, some of their ads, and general creativity as a brand.

The stop motion animation felt a bit more in-line with the type of creativity that Adobe promotes as a brand. This type of video can be a short, replicable format for future client announcements for our own brand.

Emily had experience putting together stop motion and paper craft productions, so she got to work on a first draft of the video.

When I think of Adobe, I think of software that helps bring your ideas to life.

Production Designer Emily Mormann

The Adobe logo being drawn on a tablet

Adobe’s core offering is to help bring creative ideas to life. Stop motion, as a format, is also a whimsical and surprising way to bring ideas to life. Meld the two and you’ve got magic.

Inspired by the Billie Eilish x Adobe video (and a handful of other Adobe ads telling Adobe’s story), our idea started to take shape.

A Adobe x Myriad announcement showcasing that they’ve collaborated on over 150 videos

Using a Wacom tablet, along with a few Photoshop and Illustrator skills, Emily developed this first prototype (above), which turned a simple 2D line into something that came to life. Initial ideas that were considered include a person with headphones, playing the piano, and flowers, but we landed on the horse as a nod to the classic Eadweard Muybridge's "The Horse In Motion" zoetrope animation.

The papercraft component of the animation would turn this 2D concept into more of a 3D lifeform. In essence, Adobe brings new life to classic ideas and we wanted to put that on display.

Given how we use their software on every video we make, working with Adobe has felt like a dream collaboration for our team.

Myriad President Will Feichter

After a few rounds of creative edits to the animatic, we set up lights, camera and action in our office to start filming. Emily cut out the horse shapes, logos and color bars with a Cricut 3 machine.

The paper craft direction allowed for integration of the 3D shapes and photography with the digital 2d components Emily created, moving between different mediums that Adobe plays in.

An Adobe stop motion video about continuous animation

It took about a half day to set up the lights and software. Once that was ready, it was time to pop open Dragonframe and start capturing, one frame at a time. Dragonframe offers an onion skin feature that allows for smooth layering of frames and as a result; a seamless animation with smooth transitions.

All of these pre-production steps helped make the production process a cinch.

Adobe brings new life to classic ideas.

Production Designer Emily Mormann

After a half day at the stop motion table, it was back to Adobe Creative Suite to finish the film. Lightroom for color correction. Photoshop to line up, mask and sync the frames (Sometimes you bump into a table and have to cut out objects that shifted in the process). Adobe After Effects for the final editing and pacing of the film. Throughout the project, Adobe CS allowed us to make a seemingly complicated filming process quite easy on both the front end of planning and back end of finishing.

Given Adobe makes access to high quality software easy and affordable, they are on the forefront of how the world is changing creatively. This project was our metaphorical toast to our new friends at Adobe.

The team for this project:

  • Will Feichter - Executive Producer
  • Emily Mormann - Director + Production Designer
  • Max Zampieri - Creative Director + Director of Photography
  • Jedidiah Gant - Brand Director + Producer
  • Alysse Campbell - Assistant Producer
  • Aviana Vickers - Creative + Production Assistant
  • Melissa Douglas - Production Assistant
  • Brent Edwards + Alejandro Lechuga - Editors

Learn more about our animation services and check out more of our Behind The Scenes blogs.

20 Nov 2024