Score! This 16-bit retro style animated video we made for Med School Tutors just won a HubSpot Impact Award in the Graphic Design category.
Patrick Shea, Field & Channel Marketing, Director at HubSpot, Inc., says,
"Salted Stone has set an example for how businesses everywhere should be transforming their marketing with inbound. Their strategic approach to attracting, engaging, and delighting customers has not only built valuable relationships with their audience, but has driven growth for their agency and the inbound movement. Our team here at HubSpot is proud to call Salted Stone a Partner and recognize them with this Award."
Mitch McKenzie, Salted Stone’s Creative Director, enjoyed the research part of this project which involved playing and watching clips from various SNES and Sega Genesis games, but notes that once production began, “the pixel art style was a pretty painstaking process to animate.”
That’s because basically every element had to be done frame by frame. McKenzie had a lot of assistance from our designer Steve Gomez in building a lot of the little pieces and character movements.
[Read more about the making of the video.]
Beyond the animation, our team also tackled the massive job of creating original audio for the video. McKenzie went in with the goal of wanting to create a more immersive world in order to heighten the emotional impact and up the humor factor, so he took the time to write and record original music for the video in his home studio, and then the rest of our team spent a lot of time and effort finding the perfect voice talent.
McKenzie continues, “I love working on projects like this where we have the opportunity to build a little world from the ground up and I get the opportunity to let my obsessive nature take over with all the little details. I’m really proud of how cohesive everything turned out. I think we nailed the tone.”
David A. Schulman, Chief Creative Officer at Med School Tutors, says, “Few businesses I’ve worked with understand that secret pact made between artists, where egos are left outside of the sandbox—and at the end of the day, if you create something that truly engages and tells your story, chances are you won’t even know who came up with what in the process. It becomes that cohesive.”
Faith Meyer Yeung, COO at Med School Tutors, says, “The video still blows my mind every time I watch it.”
Mike Skeehan, Salted Stone’s Managing Partner, adds, “The caliber of our creative continues to be a key differentiator for us. Our team remains second-to-none within the HubSpot partner ecosystem. We're grateful for the recognition, and—more than this—for the people who contribute to Salted Stone's ongoing growth.”
If you have any questions about how we produced the video, or if you’d like to talk through your own animated video ideas, please reach out. We love talking to people about this stuff :)
