The Research

The research of this thesis consisted of reviewing papers, articles and films, as well as conducting interviews with industry professionals. Their insight in particular was fascinating. As they have created teasers for their own animated shorts, it was interesting to note what their personal experiences were like.

The research in itself was split into five main topics:

1. Defining the word “teaser”

2. Introduction to animated teasers

3. Storytelling

4. Marketing

5. Visual development & animation

In the introduction we defined, analysed and gave examples of different types of teasers. Storytelling consisted of learning about story archetypes, and how these can be applied in teasers. In the marketing section, we took a closer look at honourable and infamous animated movie campaigns. And finally for visual development, we revisited the basics of the principles of design in order to deepen our understanding on visual storytelling and animation.

The First Ideas

After the research gave us a good understanding of the significance and structure of animated teasers, we decided to deepen our learnings by creating one of our own.

As we are both passionate illustrators and storytellers, we have many stories in our heads that we wanted to explore. We felt that Catarina’s original story “Light Warden” in particular was suitable to develop in our thesis. In summary, the story is about a girl named Alina, and her elder friend named Hugo, as they embark on a journey to find the Light Warden.

While the general character designs and narrative were already set prior to our thesis, we still had a lot of creative freedom. This is because teasers usually consist of custom-made shots that don’t have to fit with the narrative of the film. While a teaser can include shots from the final film, it certainly doesn’t have to.

In total, we created 6 unique storyboards which were edited to fit the rhythm of 6 different trailer music tracks. Luckily, we also got to use a track that was composed specifically for the story.

The Survey

For the user-testing phase of our thesis, we felt it would be valuable to test 5 of our animatics in a survey. The survey concentrated on obtaining information on the audience’s preference regarding the narrative and mood of each teaser. It concluded with a ranking system, through which the participants could score their most and least favourite idea.

The feedback from the survey was very valuable, as it offered some insight into the preferences of our target audience. We carefully examined the results and aimed to implement the feedback that was given. The teaser we ultimately decided to further develop was Teaser 1 > This is because it was the participant’s favourite, and promised the most exciting story.

Developing the Teaser

Teaser 1 was refined by adding, replacing and completely removing shots. We experimented with multiple variants and ended up with an improved version.

Since color and light are essential parts of visual storytelling, we decided it would be important to create color keys for each of the shots. Multiple sketches were made in order to explore the possibilities of different lighting scenarios. It was interesting to see how these different variants influenced the mood and overall reception of the teaser.

We also created lineups and character sheets to ensure visual consistency throughout the animation. While we were only able to animate one shot of the actual teaser, it was interesting to see how the finalized version differs from the initial storyboard.

Current Stage & Next Steps

At the current stage, we are happy to present the colorized animatic for our thesis (the link is below). Even though at the time we concluded our documentation only 1 of 18 shots were finalized, we plan to continue working on this project. In the upcoming weeks, we would like to develop the remaining shots. 

Additionally, we also sadly didn't have time to explore the typeface / logo for „Light Warden“. Typography is a very relevant topic that we briefly covered in our research, but didn't expand on during the implementation of our teaser.

Thesis Documentation (PDF)

^ the version above has single pages.

A double-page version (=Druckbögen) is found below:

Thesis Presentation (PDF)