The National Bed Federation is the official trade body for the bed manufacturers. As well as industry their industry work, they also run Bed Advice UK, which supports retailers and the public. They wanted a video to promote their annual awareness campaign, National Bed Month, which takes place in March every year. 2022’s theme was Wake up on the right side with the right bed. The video would be part of a digital marketing pack; they came to Distant Future for 2D character design, animation and recording.
Often with this kind of project, clients come to us with a visual concept, and then develop the script from there. In this case, Philippa Warford of the National Bed Federation did exactly the opposite.
2D Character Design and Animation
- National Bed Federation
- Trade Association
- bedfed.org.uk
Visual Design, Character Development, Storyboard, Voiceover and Audio
Thank you very much for the animation, and for your team’s work on it. It’s simple but effective – and humorous.
Philippa Warford / National Bed Federation
We’d worked with Philippa before, when she was with the NHS, so she knew she was in safe hands. She had the finished script ready to go, but for the visuals, the full specification was “engaging and fun”. That three-word creative brief gave us a blank slate to play with — which was fun for us, too!
The Fly, The Mattress, The Mountain, The Monster: those were the titles of the four treatments we offered.
Once they picked The Monster, the question was which monster? We worked with different illustrators to develop different 2D character design concepts, and then let Philippa pick her favourite before we began animation.
2D animation echoed the style of public information films many bed-buyers grew up with in the 1970s and 1980s. Without doubt, that nostalgic element lent the video a charm that would have been lost with more sophisticated techniques. At our internal review meeting, we voted this one of our favourite projects of the year. More importantly, Philippa and the National Bed Federation loved it too.
