Project Case Study: Crosley Law Animation
We recently worked with Crosley Law, who wanted to invert the personal injury firm trope on its head.
How many personal injury law firm commercials have you seen that were actually good?
They’re a kind of predictable stereotype now: a well kempt attorney steps in front of a flashy-but-clearly-green-screened-background, points at you in a vaguely uncomfortable manner, and warns you that post-injury distress is imminent unless you call the giant, pulsing, one-eight-hundred number at the bottom of the screen right now.
Personally, we’ve never been a huge fan of that style and, it turns out, neither was Crosley Law, for whom we recently produced a new animation piece.
Together with LaFleur Marketing in an invigorating and refreshing partnership, we created something that successfully bucks that trend and hopefully inspires some other law firms to think a bit bigger, a bit bolder. So, how did we pull it off?
The Design Process
Our first order of business was to define an art style that was inspired by Saul Bass’ legendary talent, but was nevertheless fresh, modern, and unique to Crosley. Ryan Brady, our super-duper-talented-illustrator-and-animator-extraordinaire, quickly produced some frames that nailed the aesthetic.
Saul Bass is known for his graphic style and bold colors so I used that as a tool when building the world in which this character lives in… Overlaying textures, grit and desaturated color layers on top of the animation was also a nod to the old Saul Bass film posters.
Ryan Brady
Early stages of design & illustration
Now, as much as we love Saul Bass’ style, and as much as we think Ryan nailed the aesthetic,
it didn’t come without its own challenges.
For one, a particular mandate of both the design style and the project’s constraints was a limited color palette: red, black, white, blue, gray, and orange. Some of those belong to Crosley’s own brand guidelines, while the red, black, and white were chosen to accentuate visual contrast and create the visual theme of “red tape”.
Indeed, such a narrow palette forced us to make more with less and get creative with some visual storytelling elements.
Color Palette
Another obstacle?
The minimalist art style presents an interesting challenge: how do we effectively convey emotion on a face to which few illustrative elements belong? Ultimately, we relied on the use of illustrated “blinks”, which aided in keeping our protagonist’s face minimally illustrated and animated, and ultimately in line with the overall art style.
Thankfully, Ryan is equally skilled in storyboarding as he is talented in illustrating, and this was a key tool in smoothing out the animation process, in addition to providing both LaFleur and Crosley a shot-by-shot preview of the illustrative intent.
But the challenges presented only motivated us to double-down and find the best solutions. And ultimately, some of those challenges produced creatively satisfying processes elsewhere— frame-by-frame animation, for instance, a technique we don’t often get to employ, but one that was necessary for this piece.
Beyond that, LaFleur and Crosley both entrusted us to get creative with varying elements of perspective. Exaggerated focal points, the use of negative space, and sharp, crisp angles allowed for exploration in portraying struggle, relief, and other emotions that were central to the overall narrative.
And to top it all off, the project’s timeline was relatively relaxed, which allowed for more time than usual to try different approaches, bounce ideas off our partners, and polish the piece to our content.
Like a pebble dropped into a still pond, at DropDrop we believe that remarkable video content can create ripples of impact in our community. But we know that these ripples are not created alone. That’s why we’re thrilled to share that our friends at LaFleur Marketing and DropDrop won a Gold American Advertising Federation West MI award for our client, Crosley Law Firm, P.C.’s ‘Turning Red Tape into Red Carpet’ ad creative! We’re proud of this successful campaign and grateful for the collaboration with LaFleur Marketing.
In the end…
…we’re very proud of the piece we produced, but above all, we’re grateful— for the opportunity to collaborate with LaFleur and Crosley, for their thoughtful discourse and close partnership, for their willingness to challenge and to be challenged, and for the trust that was endowed to us throughout the entire process. Their feedback, professionalism, and creativity were a welcome and refreshing process, and we hope to be able to produce work of this caliber with them again in the near future.
As we expand our portfolio, we hope to partner with more LaFleurs and more Crosleys. There are lots of stories to tell, videos to shoot, frames to illustrate, elements to animate, and scores to compose. But the features that create their individuality and potency are bound in the relationships we build with our clients and the trust we share together to push boundaries, to explore confidently, to produce creatively,
and to finish with finesse.
Complete list of our winning entries in the 44th Annual Telly Awards for this spot
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Crosley Law – Turning Red Tape in to Red Carpet is the Bronze Telly Winner in Online Commercials – Use of Animation: Official Listing
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Crosley Law – Turning Red Tape in to Red Carpet is the Gold Telly Winner in Online Commercials – Use of 2D Animation: Official Listing
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Crosley Law – Turning Red Tape in to Red Carpet is the Silver Telly Winner in Online Commercials – Fully Animated piece: Official Listing