Funk-e Branding

A call out to Mark

2012-02-06T08:17:00.000-08:00

Facebookito ergo sum. You can't really call yourself much these days, if you're not on Facebook. So one of the first things we did when founding Funk-e a few years back, was getting ourselves a nice little Facebook profile. We hooked up with all our friends, placed some pictures of our first animations, our work space, and let everyone know how we were doing. But after a while, Facebook wanted all companies to get themselves a fan page instead of a profile.

So, guess what? We got ourselves a fan page.

And so, after some time we – like many companies and other organizations out there – ended up having a Facebook profile and a Facebook fan page. Not good. It's quite a lot of work to keep both places up to date, manage your on-line contacts at two places and have your contacts spread apart in two different little on-line worlds. But putting a stop to either of the two on-line spots would mean losing touch with people we’d love to keep in touch with.

So we decided to go about testing some of the new Facebook tools out there to help us fix this problem. First of all, we converted our profile to a page. That sounds a heck lot easier than it is. Error this, security so, error that. ‘Please log-in on the pc you’ve used before.’ New pc? Too bad, sucker. But finally, after a few days of Googling guess what? It worked out!

Next, we had two pages, and tried to merge them into one. Again, a Facebook tool would have been nice. Facebook offers the option to merge any of your pages with another page, as long as they both have the same name. But (!) only the smaller of the two pages is eligible for a merge into the bigger one. And – guess what - we wanted to merge the bigger into the smaller one. Luckily, we at Funk-e have a lot of really cool friends and could get some peeps liking our fan page in a jiffy, which is why we now only have one super duper cool page left.

Thanks everyone for helping us out.

But why is Facebook making it all so complicated? And why is all the help on the website so hard to understand? Why did we need to turn to Google to understand and find anything to support us on Facebook? Why doesn’t Facebook make instructions just plain stupid easier?

BOOM!

Introducing.. Funk-e. Maybe mr. Zuckerberg and his colleagues should consider to hire us for a new explanimation sometime. If you guys are not too busy entering the stock market of course. We'd love to help you out.

About foley - making custom sound FX

2012-01-30T15:25:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered how the sound of a glass bottle breaking is made? ehm.... by simply breaking a bottle and keeping a microphone close to it you might say?

Well, not always. First of all recording sound FX means you need to stand close to the object, and since not everyone particularly enjoys having glass in his face, or standing in an explosion we sometimes need to reproduce sounds in different ways.

So some smart guys came up with Foley, this is the art of reproducing or recording the sounds that we see in a movie but that microphones can not get close enough to or reproduce accurately enough.

So for those of you that might be interested, here is a video that gives a bit of a quick explanation of how all these great sound effects that you hear in movies and our animations are born. As you can see, these small details are what can really a difference in an animation or movie, but they also take a lot of time.

This is also how most of our sound effects that we often still use, such as the "pop" sound, or the "page flip" sound at the end of all our animations were made. Of course we also do a lot of stuff digitally, since it simply takes less time.

But then again, nothing beats the authenticity of foley sound FX. So if you ever have some spare time and want to make your video more interesting, try making the sound FX by yourself. You will also realize that splashing stuff in buckets, throwing stuff on the ground, smacking objects on a table, is really a lot of fun.

Saving students from poverty

2012-01-23T02:59:00.000-08:00

In the last months we have been working very hard to make awesome animated explanations, but we now believe the time has come to do something back for our fellow youngsters. We truly believe in giving back to the people that helped us so much throughout this time: our friends our fans, fellow students, fellow ex-students that have supported us so thoroughly deserve much more than just a silly pat on the shoulder.

So we thought, what could we do to help these poor students, that are known to have such a hard life, scraping the last coins together to pay for that last beer that they so deserve after so much hard work.

And what better way to help these hardworking students pay for beer than... Money!

So there you go, we will now reward every great referral you send our way that ends up in an animation with 150 nice, shiny, pretty Euro's.

For more information check out www.funk-e.nl/referral

Guaranteed viral succes!

2012-01-12T08:47:00.000-08:00

So you want an animation that goes viral? Well, who doesn't?

Actually, a lot of our clients ask us to produce an explanation video that goes viral. Meaning buckets and buckets filled with views. No, what am I saying? Thousands, millions or even trillions! Everyone in the world talking about that particular video. Everybody spreading it around, like some contagious disease.

We used to think it's not possible to guarantee a viral success. I mean, we always strive for the best possible result. But explaining a concept is our core business, and the goal to reach as many viewers as possible easily interferes with the explanatory function of the video.

It takes a real well done campaign to absolutely guarantee a viral effect. And even when you do everything right, it might still fail because you’re out of luck. And, it takes a lot of money. One can't expect a 150-grand campaign on a budget of a thousand dollars. Or else, you might just be plain old buying your publicity after all.

But boy, were we wrong. Because – apparently - now you can get a guaranteed viral! And the bizarre thing is, anyone can do it. Watch this video and see for yourself. Enjoy!

Funk-e: 3 years of evolution

2011-11-25T08:49:00.000-08:00

Awesome. That's the first word I could come up with when 2 days ago we realized we started this business 3 years ago.

If you think about the fact that we started like this

And then we had our first office

And now Funk-e has upgraded everything to this sweet place in the city center of Rotterdam

It's kinda crazy... Things are moving fast, and we are loving it.

We like our new office, it kinda looks ehm, really fancy. Wanna come check it out? The Funk-e team will be happy to welcome you for a good old cup of espresso at Aert van Nesstraat 45 on the top floor. (Owyeah, you are reading that correctly.. top floor :)

Awesome.

What "clouds" a Funk-e mind?

2011-03-28T14:26:00.000-07:00

Patryk, a dear friend of us, introduced us to a cool website lately called Wordle (go try it out, it's pretty cool!). This basically creates a cloud of all the words that are frequently mentioned in a file, website or blog. This tool nicely visualizes all the stuff that keeps you busy.

So we decided to put our Blog link in it and this is what came out of it. Music was also pretty big, but this is not crazy, since we loooove music :)

Bob's evolution from 1.0 to 2.0

2011-03-24T11:42:00.000-07:00

As you can see not so long ago we had made our first pilot series for Bobshop.nl. Now, just like in every kind of series, there are always going to be things that can be improved or slightly adjusted to make the animation even better. Bob went through 3 phases.

Bob started like this in our sketchbooks:

Then he was tweaked into this in the pilot animations:

And finally pimped up to look like this:

Ow and by the way, here is our latest animation, so you can see his new smooth moves and hear the cool custom music.

Making custom made music rocks

2011-02-08T09:55:00.000-08:00

For a while now we have been making animations that were accompanied with a nice background music, sometimes this was made by me (Alex) and sometimes by professionals. But nothing beats the feeling of working together with other professionals to make music for a client. So I went to our talented composer contact to get creative and make something to fit our latest animation. (coming out soon)

Having an own recording studio must be every music loving guys dream :)

Conclusion: making custom made music for work = awesome

Funk-e animators drink!

2011-02-05T16:00:00.000-08:00

Making animations is often something done in flexible teams, where every animator, voiceover actor, or musician can simply work from home. Of course we do love to get together and chat about what we do face to face, so we decided to have a drink with all our lovely freelance animators.

It was very nice to see everybody came by. We briefly discussed the growth we have achieved in the past few weeks and our future plans. With a group of 10 animators from all over the Netherlands, all equipped with a very diverse set of skills, we feel confident we will make many great new animations this year :)

We are all ready, bring it on!

Funk-e rocks the stage!

2011-01-25T15:54:00.000-08:00

So here we are, 2 years after having launched and just when we thought things were starting to cool down, we were asked to give a speech introducing our company at our International Business bachelor graduation ceremony (more than 1000 people present!). So like true heroes we manned up, and got some guts together to step up on the gigantic stage of "de Doelen", a massive concert hall in Rotterdam.

Animated Slides

Now even though Joost and I find ourselves to be quite the charismatic speakers :p, we knew we were going to need something special to spice our presentation up. So we thought, why not draw our story out in animated pictures? And that's exactly what we did. We asked one of our animators to draw our story in 10 slides. This really helped us tell our story, and spice it up a little, instead of boring people with generic slides. These are the slides:

Animated Slides about Funk-e

View more presentations from Funk-e Branding.

And just in case you are curious what that looks like on a large screen in front of a massive audience:

Ciao!

It's ALIVE!

2011-01-25T15:27:00.000-08:00

It really works like magic

After a few months of hard work our team of animators, creatives and our voiceover-actor have given life to Bob, the animation character that explains how electronics work (... in simple words ;) ). Bob is a character we developed for the Bobshop, an electronics retailer in the Netherlands that was very excited to hear about animation. Of course we will not hold these images from you, you should simply judge for yourself.

For example, ever wondered what the difference is between LED, LCD and PLASMA TV? Well here is your answer (in Dutch):

You can find more of Bob's video's on the Bobshop youtube channel

Ciao!

The making of the CleanTech Business Club animation

2010-10-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

It gives us great pleasure to introduce you to our latest animation:

What's different about this animation?

Well, simply put: we want to show that animated explanations can be used in a more formal and inspirational way too. We decided to write a story around John, a typical entrepreneur in the Clean Technology industry, instead of a boring corporate video that simply list benefits and services.

Huh, moonlight panels? But those don't exist...

... and that is exactly the point! The CleanTech Business Club is looking for people with innovative companies, and wants to help them grow. So we needed to find something that was still understandable for people, while always remaining innovative in the eyes of the viewers. If we would have used solar panels, it would not be innovative anymore, and perhaps even outdated in a few years. Since solar panels are pretty well known we decided to copy the concept to a fictional product that would probably not be made any time soon. This means that in 10 years the CleanTech Business Club could still be using our animation and look like the hippest people around!

Lessons learned?

Many! We got a great taste of the power of animation in a more formal sphere. Also in this animation we focused more on how telling a story about a character can be a great alternative for complex businesses and abstract concepts. We managed to turn something very abstract into a more concrete story that everyone can understand.

Happy ending

The CleanTech Business club will launch the animation very soon on their homepage, and have already had the opportunity to use the animation in several occasions such as in this recent interview on EnergieBusiness.nl

Great animations are made by great teams

Last but not least, we are never tired of thanking the great people that have collaborated on this project with us! Great people like you are indispensable to make great animations like this, thank you!

As you can see our client was happy to share his satisfaction with the Funk-e work on linkedin... Wohoo!

The making of the Hubshop animation

2010-10-16T03:11:00.000-07:00

A while ago the dear people of the Hubshop came to us and asked us if we could make an animation that would explain their innovative concept. To which we naturally responded: Hell yeah!

(See that really cool banner? That's our video!)

The Hubshop is a store that sells sustainable products from entrepreneurs and small businesses all over the world, which was just a great topic and a lot of fun to make an animation about.

Before we started writing the script we had a few talks with the owners to get a feeling of how their business works and who the audience would be for the animation. So after some brainstorm sessions and consuming a lot of our precious whiteboard marker ink we finally came down to a very simple approach for the animation mainly; a cartoony style that would instill a good feeling while still being to the point and clear. The other thing we tried was to explain the concept to both store visitors and the people that wanted to showcase their products in the store.

So once the main concept was in place now comes the part of coming up with a good script. It's really amazing, you'd think, "ow c'mon it's just 200 words, how hard can it be?"... So after a few sleepless nights, one sunny day at 8 a.m. I had an authentic Eureka moment. I always wanted to use the word "stuff" simply because it sounds so cool and casual, so that morning all of a sudden i knew it: "good stuff and bad stuff"

It's just awesome how sometimes all you need is 5 words, and the rest just made sense from that point onwards.

Joost then drew out a very basic storyboard based on the script like this..

(Joost is quite the artist huh?)

...which I then turned into a voiceover...

... and our animator Niels then turned into a great animation, we are very proud of him :). Niels also suggested the perfect music for it which was the cherry on top of the cake.

And that is how we created something cool out of just a few ideas. I don't know about you guys, but to me it's like magic. Curious what it looks like? Or just wanna see it again? I'm sure you do, there you go:

That's all for now. More video's are coming soon!

Ciao,

Alex

Funk-e: harder, better, faster, stronger

2010-08-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Hey there!

Yes, I know, it's been a while since the last blog update, but don't worry we've never been gone, we've just been busy. So let me fill you in on some updates. Over the past few months we have realized something very fundamental in our company which will impact most of the projects we will undergo in the near future: we love to make animations for companies, and we are good at it.

Funk-e has been growing over the past few weeks, and not just a little. Joost and I have met new animators, voiceover actors and worked on new animation projects that taught us a lot of new stuff about animation in sessions like these:

So why don't I just show you some of the cool things we've done?

Stoobu.com is a new website where students can trade their books. We helped Stoobu in the making of 3 movies that explain what they do and how buying and selling works. We helped Stoobu write their story in simple words, made the voiceover and created a nice song to fit their style.

These are the 3 resulting video's:

The overall concept:

The buying process:

The selling process:

Of course webdesign will always have a special place in our hearts, especially when it concerns projects like these. We have designed the website and the logo for coaching and mentoring business Talentinspiration.com.

The website looks like this:

Also we designed a campaign for a new type of workshop called "8 to be great". This initiative will consist of a series of workshops about success, based on the book "8 to be great" written by Richard St. John.

The campaign design looks like this:

Also the campaign included the design of a flyer (which can be seen in the picture below). Talentinspiration was very satisfied with the designs, so we were rewarded with our first awesome trophy :)

We are currently working on a really cool project that includes the design of a character that will be used in the branding of a large company in the Netherlands, along with a series of animations. Curious? Keep an eye on our Blog, Youtube channel, Twitter or Facebook page!

Ciao!

Alex

Dropbox: When animation is all you need

2010-05-07T12:09:00.001-07:00

You might have noticed, whenever you visit popular online storage website dropbox.com, there is only one big play button like this one:

No fancy design, no long stories, no unnecessary flashy colors. This elegant approach to communication puts all the focus on one thing only: what does the product do?

Dropbox's simple communication and clean user interface unlocked the doors to over 4 million users worldwide (see the dropbox blog for more user statistics). Ow yeah another small thing, you know how they got 60% of their customer base? The oldest trick in the business: referrals.

So if you feel like 2 GB of free online storage can be useful use this referral link and earn yourself and us a nice extra 250MB!

Explaining StudentCar in 2 minutes

2010-04-20T01:23:00.001-07:00

We are proud to say that the first explanation animation is completed! We worked with StudentCar in order to create an animation that helps them explain the concept of their company and carsharing.

Before animating funk-e has created a communication strategy on which all elements of online marketing have been based (such as their twitter page, blog and youtube page and of course the animation). Once the fundaments of the communication were established funk-e provided all the elements for the animation: voiceover, custom made background music, animation and artwork, script and story.

We are very curious of what you think about it, so don't hesitate to leave a comment!

Enjoy!

Animation in education

2010-04-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

Here is a nice example of how animation made it possible to explain a difficult subject such as the credit crisis to virtually anybody. This type of animation can help economics students get a clear idea of the way the bigger picture works, and help anybody else that is simply interested in the matter.

You will find that in this kind of animation, animating is not the biggest problem, but telling the story right. So before you hire a team of animators make sure that your story is clear without any visuals at all, then once your story alone works well enough to be told in front of an audience, add the visuals to amplify the power of your story.

So if you are an educator of some kind and are about to start a course, think about how such an animation could help open the mind of your students before they are bombarded with theories.

Here is part 1:

Here is part 2:

A better way to show off new features

2010-04-10T04:56:00.000-07:00

You know how normally when a website comes up with new features you are puzzled because you can't find all the buttons anymore where they used to be? Or when you find an explanation but it's basically a lot of technical buzz words? Or when you find a video but it's a really bad screen recording where you can barely hear the sound?

Well thank god for Youtube. Here is a great example of how they give users a proper tour of their new features, simple and clear.

Enjoy:

Funk-e releases first animation

2010-03-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Funk-e is proud to present a first sneak preview of it's animation work!

After some hard work, a teaser of 30 seconds is done. This teaser will be used as a promotional video for StudentCar (a Dutch car sharing company for students) during the "Student filmfestival 2010" in Rotterdam.

The promotional video is part of the final video that will be 2 minutes long and will be displayed on the homepage of StudentCar: www.StudentCar.nl

The goal that Funk-e wants to achieve, is to explain the core concept of StudentCar within 2 minutes. This teaser is 30 seconds long and is more limited to the pure basics.

Funk-e has delivered an all around service for this animation, meaning:

Making a storyline
Writing a script
Recording voiceover and music
Design Artwork and Animation

Enjoy the result here:

Great combination of animation styles

2010-03-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

Here is a video we stumbled upon that combines stopmotion with various styles of animation while explaining the impossible subject of procrastination.

Was Santa early this year?

2010-02-25T17:51:00.000-08:00

Hmmm.. The lovely smell of fresh new hardware... Finally no more crashing laptop, no more weird cracking sounds, only a nice constant hum on the background. Finally after some waiting it is finally here: Alex's new laptop. It has been a long time waiting but it will all be worth it.

Here are some pictures of the beautiful, classy arrival of the new Mac.

Now just a small footnote: Notice how Apple makes the package so beautiful and desirable. If you ask most Mac users where their box is, they probably still have it stacked somewhere in a safe place in their room.

One might ask: is it really all that necessary to package a laptop as if it were jewelry? I think it is. Especially online, which is often (still) seen as an "emotionless" channel. Making the arrival of the package more spectacular can compensate for the lack of emotion online in the web shop. The feeling you give in that exact moment to the customer is invaluable. This first impression lasts, the christmas feeling you get when opening your Apple package does not fade away.

So yeah, are you feeling a bit down? Do you have some money to spare?

Buy a Mac.

(...and then try to figure out how you can deliver your own product to your customer with the same feeling)

How NOT to use animation: The Microsoft way

2010-02-19T05:23:00.000-08:00

Now things at Microsoft are not going all that swell since the growth of competitors Apple and Google. So Microsoft decided it wanted to take a small sidestep from it's conventional and traditional image by using animation. "Maybe we will look more hip?"... Bad idea.

Animation is supposed to show a complex process and make it look simple and clear. Microsoft managed to make a video where they did the exact opposite. This video tries to make a comparison between Google's service and that of Microsoft. The animation does a terrible job at creating a core message and shoots one business term after the other making the video look confusing and messy.

Still want to do posters? Do it like Wonderbra

2010-02-18T05:43:00.000-08:00

Normally i would not encourage the use of offline marketing. Offline ads are expensive, boring and it is easy to get lost in the clutter. But lets say your boss is persistent and still convinced by the power of offline marketing and you have no choice.

Here is an example of a great idea that "Wonderbra" had, a retailer specialized in bra's of all sizes and kinds. They were probably stuck with the following question: "How do we combine breasts, posters and a funny clip?..."

Well... here is the result.

How animation can boost a presentation

2010-02-17T16:07:00.000-08:00

At some point in our lives we all face the challenge of giving a good presentation. Whether it is for work, studies or simply a good cause you always hope your ideas will somehow stick...

By now you have probably found yourself struggling with the thought that what you are trying to explain is simply too complicated to put into a few words, diagrams and pictures.

Now here is an example of a video that beautifully combines the use of animation with a presentation about a complex problem: the impact of mass production on our planet.

What is amazing about this video is that it manages to touch upon all the most important topics, while still remaining accessible for a broad audience.

See it for yourself:

For more information about "the story of stuff" visit their website: http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Ok Go does it again

2010-02-13T09:28:00.000-08:00

For those of you who do not know the band OK Go, here is a video that might help you remember where you might know them from:

Check this link for the video

These guys are amazing at coming up with innovative video ideas that basically sell themselves online.

They have a new video now called "WTF?" which is made through an old technique where the camera captures all frames of a certain motion and keeps them on screen.

Here is video where the band explains how they made this great clip:

You can watch the result through this link