How Do We Make Our Animated Ecards?
Hello, I am Katie Davies and over the past few years I have had an enormous amount of fun and enjoyment creating a range of animated, Artistic Ecards, available to send through my website www.katiescards.com. I thought you might like to know a bit more about the processes involved to arrive at the finished E cards you can view on the site.
Pen and Ink background for a Birthday Ecard
Most people are quite surprised when they learn how much time and effort goes into producing one of our E cards. It can take up to five or six weeks to create one of the really high quality Birthday E cards or Christmas E cards. Firstly I sit down with my thinking cap on and try and develop an idea for a new e card, usually with a pile of good art and design books around me and the amazing resource available through google search. When I feel I have an idea I am happy with, I then rough out a storyboard which is a great way to make changes and fine tune the E-card idea. Here is the storyboard for Cat and Mouse Birthday Ecard:
Cat and Mouse Birthday E-card storyboard
As soon as the storyboard is finished we will start drawing character and background designs. When we are happy with them, they are scanned into the computer and converted to digital files for importing into Adobe Flash, which is the program that is used to animate all of the E-cards.
Character design for Fathers Day E card
At the same time we source music that matches the mood of the e-card, either commissioned from Ben Davis, or downloaded from a royalty free music library. Then the background artwork is painted or drawn and also scanned in to the computer, ready for importing into flash.
Father's Day Ecard design
This is a photo of me painting the background for the Fairies Mothers Day E-card
Background for the Fairies Mother's Day Ecard
Once all of elements are in place then the actual animation can begin. depending on how complex the card is it can take between three days and three weeks. Animation is always time consuming but very rewarding when you see the characters come to ‘life’.
Contraption Birthday E-card animation
When the animation is finished, which is always following a series of tweaks and adjustments, the front and end messages are put in place, then all that is left is to upload the finished card to the correct Ecard category on the website.
