Direct Line Transportation

Project Details

My friends and colleagues at iFlySolo contracted me to create this promotional video for Direct Line Transportation, to appear on the client’s homepage and inform visitors about the company’s freight-management and logistics services.

Given a relatively sparse script, and a handful of bullet-points, I was tasked with executing all the visual material you see here, as well as the construction of a basic narrative to drive the content. Knowing that this animation was likely to be re-edited and re-purposed in a wide variety of promotional materials, I tried to put together something that would function coherently as a stand-alone piece and could also be spliced into smaller, self-contained clips, while still remaining true to the brand as a whole.

To accomplish this, I created a collection of informational graphics in Illustrator, and a custom-branded semi-trailer truck in 3D to act as a rolling billboard for the company’s identity.

To stay within the project scope, I augmented some light use of Cinema 4D with the much faster Element 3D plugin for After Effects, and was very pleased with the results. Being able to integrate 3D objects natively into the compositing program was hugely expeditious, and  a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed being able to make things fly around in true 3D without having to jump between applications. I was also more than happy to avoid the massive render times required by most dedicated 3D packages. The results aren’t *quite* as polished, but for a video destined for the web, I was blown away with the quality I was getting. This is definitely a pipeline I’ll be using again.