DRS Film Sets

As part of the Thinkfarm team, I helped give DRS Film Sets a brand and website refresh to help them win the big clients that they were after.

They already had a little dog mascot, which we all loved and really wanted to keep to add character and keep the site playful.

DRS are a bunch of talented individuals with skills ranging from carpentry to painting, and we wanted to capture that in their new look.

We started creating paint textures, printed dogs and cut outs in the real world to scan in to keep an authenticity and a “designed scruffiness”. After all DRS are not afraid to get their hands dirty!

We also played around with concepts of what the website could be, we wanted it to feel like you were in the workshop with them.

As the rest of the team started to focus in on design, me and my illustrator coworker started working on animations for the dog to do across the site.

We were initially looking at classic cartoons such as Pink Panther for gags we could do with the dog and turn into gifs. This then grew into finding movie references we could pastiche.

I would create a set in Cinema 4D, use in After Effects to animate a dog in a block colour, then my coworker would take it into Procreate. She would then use the reference to create a hand-drawn animation of the scribbly dog and I would import that back into Cinema 4D on a plane.

The dog had been so popular that DRS wanted another video with him for when they sponsored the British Film Designer’s Guild Awards.

I storyboarded a 1 minute sequence that would show off both the dog and 3 of their most recent projects.

It would also take the gag gifs on the website to the next level.

We used the same techniques as before but this time DRS provided us some elaborate 3D sets to use in the scenes. Also because these weren’t gifs I could add lots more texture and movement, trying to give it a more cinematic look.

I also created various 3D wireframe videos throughout the DRS website, showing the sets from concept model to final film.