Marketing company AdSide Media told App2Top.ru , what tools he uses when creating advertising creatives for mobile games.
Mikhail Vshivkov — AdSide Media Marketer
Creatives for mobile games last an average of 20 seconds. The production of some of them can cost several thousand dollars and bring publishers tens of times more.
Their creation is a complex work, a large cycle in which many people are involved. But in this article we will focus only on the work of designers. More precisely, on the tools they use when creating videos.
Showreel AdSide Media
After Effects
One of the main programs for working with animation. All creatives go through AE at the final stage.
In AE, it is convenient to create visual and sound effects, add music, UI elements and various dies, transitions, and do color correction. Sometimes this tool is enough to create all the work from and to. However, we in AE, as a rule, do only the final gluing.
Some developers release separate plugins (scripts) for AE, which significantly expand the program’s capabilities and save time. We will also tell you about them.
Creating a creative in After Effects
DUIK
This is one of the most popular plugins for After Effects.
DUIK is a tool that is mainly used to animate 2D characters, or to be precise, to create a rig. Rig helps to create control elements for the movement of the character. Supports inverse kinematics, which is necessary, for example, so that when moving by the wrist, the elbow itself bends correctly.
The plugin is officially free and is being developed by one person.
Creating a creative in After Effects using the DUIK plugin
Spine
Thanks to the grid and skeleton, you can easily animate characters here, as well as quickly import animations for later work in another environment.
The program is mainly used in game development. Many customers provide the source code in Spine, so this tool is included in the mandatory knowledge of the designer.
Creating a creative in Spine
Cinema 4D, Element 3D, Mixamo
A bunch of tools that we rarely use — either when creating complex and complex creatives, or to work with 3D models of the customer.
A good example of working with them is the video below.
Creative created with Element 3D, Cinema 4D and Mixamo
Most of the work took place in Element 3D, a plugin for After Effects. To create the effect of infinite space, the elements of the environment were multiplied. The staff of the main character was drawn from scratch. Also in this program, the light was adjusted and the elements were arranged.
The animation is made in Mixamo. This is a very convenient tool for creating a digital skeleton and performing character animation.
Cinema 4D was used to glue the entire animation together.
DAZ Studio
It is indispensable in those situations when you need to quickly create a character, show anatomy, emotions. The advantage of DAZ is a huge internal library with which you can create a hero from scratch. What can be done here in an hour would take an order of magnitude longer in Cinema 4D.
DAZ is a free distributed tool.
Creating a creative in DAZ Studio
Unreal Engine
About a year ago we started working with UE. Its main advantage is that the tool allows you to create animations and not waste time on rendering — here it happens in real time.
This is especially important for creating creatives. The fact is that when working with customers, the designer is constantly sent various edits. He should immediately make them and immediately show a new version. Spending time on full-fledged rendering in such a situation is very wasteful.
Another plus is the presence of a huge library with ready—made assets. It also reduces the time for testing working hypotheses and in general on the videos.
Creating a creative in Unreal Engine
Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
Incredibly important programs that help to more clearly adjust assets/ sources to the desired scenario or draw the sources themselves inside the programs for further work.
When creating the creative just below, the designer worked in tandem with the illustrator. The rendered images were distributed into layers and then animated in After Effects.
Creative created in Adobe Photoshop and After Effects
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We hope you were interested in learning about the tools with which creatives are created. We repeat that the designer’s work on them is only part of a large cycle, each stage of which requires both expertise and constant iteration.