I recently had the opportunity to attend LIAisons, a great mentoring conference for up-and-coming creators in the advertising industry. At this event, they gave us a lot of insight on how to create an award-winning ad. This Friendsgiving ad is me practicing my advertising skills taking some of the things I learned at the event and putting something out into the world.

Conceptualization and Inspiration

I started working on this ad on November 1st and wanted to spend a week working on it and Friendsgiving was the closest event to that end date. That is why I chose to create content around Friendsgiving. 

Friendsgiving is not a new concept for me, I know what it is, I even attended a Friendsgiving a couple of days after I finished this project. 

I have attended Friendsgiving but never actually thought about why people would want to go through the hassle of hosting, cooking, and entertaining people for ‘PreThanksgiving’. My reason was always (1) I like being around people and (2) I like food. But I know that is not the reason for everyone else. 

I know a few people who take pride in the friendships that they have built and love their friends just as much as they love their families or even more so. That way of thinking is why my concept is centered around the idea of a ‘CHOSEN FAMILY’.

Chosen family is when a group of people who are not related form a strong bonds that are equal or even stronger than their biological family.

Insite

People would rather spend Thanksgiving with their friends instead of their family.

Idea

A fun ad that shows how much more fun Thanksgiving can be with your friends instead of your family.

Pre-Production: Planning and Storyboarding

The planning stage is very important in the ad creation process. I knew that I was going to be creating this entire thing in CG which made the planning stage even more important. 

The ultimate goal was to create this Friendsgiving ad fast and simple, So I did not use the storyboard to its true potential but it was enough to get the point across.

The storyboard was used to outline the scenes, transitions, camera movement, and overall flow of the ad. This helped me a lot to speed up the process inside Cinema 4D. 

Tool Selection: Choosing Cinema 4D and After Effects

As stated before I used Cinema 4D to create the animation and rendered with Redshift, and used After Effects to color grade and add the voiceover and music. 

Why do I use Cinema 4d? 

Cinema 4d is a great software to create visuals that I already have a subscription to and I had $0 for budget so I couldn’t rent and film at a physical location.

If you are looking for other software to create 3d animations for ads, check out Tools of the Trade: Software Used in 3D Animation

Execution: Bringing Ideas into Reality

The production process involved a series of steps, from creating the dialog for the story and creating the assets to decorating the room, animating the camera movement, Setting up AOVS, final rendering, selecting the voice for the voice-over, and adding the music. All with a budget of $0 with a timeline of a week. 

If you do not know what AOVs are, that is totally fine, I put together a list of technical terms and jargon you should circle back to from time to time if you are ever curious about what something is. 

To see in more detail how I brought this ad to life check out the Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Friendsgiving Ad in Cinema 4D and After Effects. In this article I break down the process chronologically, explaining each step from concept to final rendering.

Collaboration and Team Dynamics

The goal was to create this ad in one week. I wasn’t able to get it done in a week but I was able to do it in two weeks, which is still pretty fast in my opinion. The reason I was able to get this ad created in this small window was attributed to the fact that I did not work with anyone else. 

I think if I worked with other people it would have taken a lot longer but the product would have been a lot better. I would have loved to have worked with other people, but it is hard to gather a team for a fact practice project that will require them to spend a lot of time with no financial gain. 

Instead of hiring a team, I used some premade assets and some AI-generated assets. All of that is detailed in my article about the ad creation process. 

I know what you guys are thinking, How dare you use AI, it’s stealing everyone's job! My personal take on AI is that AI alone can not take your job, but people who know how to use AI can. So..... I am just trying to make sure I am one of those guys that knows how to use it. 

But, I reached out to a musician friend of mine to see if I could use some of his music for the ad. He said yes but I asked him last minute and was running out of time and couldn’t get anything back in time. But will definitely try to ask him sooner for the next time. Check out his music HERE, let me know what audio you would have picked. 

I would have loved to collaborate with a team and create a one-percent original piece of content. This article shows what my dream team would look like for this project. 

Post-Production Magic: Enhancing the Ad

Post-production is a crucial phase when the base footage is CG. Renders can look really cool especially if you use a physical-based renderer like Redshift, but they can look obviously rendered and fact. 

So I used After Effects to color grade the footage. I am not sure if it looks more realistic after but I think it looks a little more interesting at least. 

Lessons Learned and Key Takeaways

‍ONE

Hardware is important when it comes to 3d animation, simulations, and rendering. 

Not going to go super deep into the specs, but this specific simulation runs off of the GPU and the 3090 has a lot more GPU power than my Macbook. 

Here is a benchmark of the GPU power of the two. I rendered a frame from this ad using both computers. The computer that renders the the fastest has the better GPU.  

My PC rendered this way faster. I built the PC to do this specific task so there is no surprise that it is better than my Macbook when it comes to rendering. What I wasn’t aware of is that the simulation side of Cinema 4D runs from GPU power. 

I was stuck on the steps to complete the Maylar ballons and didn’t know why and wasted two days trying to figure it out. 

I am actually thinking about selling my PC. It works perfectly fine and looks super cool, but it is three years old at this point and having the latest PC parts will speed up the creation process dramatically.

If any other creators are reading this please let me know where you go to sell your used computers. 

If anyone is interested in any recommends products and software for 3d Animation check out my article. 

TWO

The second thing would be to continue to optimize my workflow when working on 3D animation projects. 

I learned most of what I know about 3d Animation from YouTube University and never had an official teacher or a mentor to help me figure out a good process for creating. 

Conclusion

This Friendsgiving ad is my benchmark for my animation skills. Hopefully, by November 2024 My animation skills improve along with my ability to tell unique stories.

I plan to release a few other articles that go into detail on how I approached different parts of creating this ad. I encourage you to explore some of my other articles in the series for a deeper dive into technical aspects, tools used, and insights into the ad’s creation process.

If you are a creator and sorta liked this ad or the overview, send me a message, and let’s find something to collaborate on.