Flagged before it shippedthe draft was sitting too close to the client’s own reference video, and I said so mid-build rather than at delivery
Priced the pivot, did not absorb ita second milestone, approved the same day. A late concept change is scope, and naming it early is what keeps it fair both ways
Three storyboard passesthe first too busy, the second too bare, the third locked, the client sketched her own frames to close the gap
Species matched to referencea Superb Fairy-wren and an Ulysses butterfly, drawn from the links she sent rather than from generic clip shapes
Signed off without disputeboth milestones released on delivery
CASE01
What they came with
Cheryl Eagers was building a photography brand, Cherish Artz, and wanted a short animated intro to sit at the front of her marketing videos: something that put a face to the brand before the photography started.
What she arrived with was a reference video she liked and a rough direction. What she did not have was a locked concept. That is the normal state of a brief this size, and the reason most go wrong: the reference does the deciding, and what gets delivered is a version of somebody else’s idea.
Cheryl Eagers, the brand, and the face the character was drawn from.
CASE02
How I built it
On a brief this size the process is the system. A job that starts with a reference and no locked concept is the normal state of things here, and the work is getting from that reference to something the client owns without either side losing on the way.
Round one: get the likeness right
A hand-illustrated 2D likeness of Cheryl, drawn from a reference photograph and refined over one feedback round (hair length, hair colour, eye colour) until it read as her rather than as a generic character.
The character, and the expression set built around it.
Round two: say the awkward thing first
With the base animation drafted, it was sitting too close in style to the reference video Cheryl had sent. I stopped and told her before finishing it: “I took a creative decision to pick a new style, before completing this version, I thought you need to see it — if you will not like it, I’ll adapt the same style for your reference video.” That message does two jobs at once. It gives the client an easy way to say no, and it opens a door to something original without making the reference wrong.
The reference Cheryl sent, beside the draft that was following it too closely.
What came back
She had been thinking the same thing. Cheryl replied that she had realised mid-project that copying the reference that closely could get her “in trouble for copying so closely,” and asked to pivot to an original concept (flowers, a camera, nature) instead of the wording-and-icon intro the reference was built on.
Round three: price the pivot
A concept change at that point is scope creep by definition. Rather than quietly absorbing it, I named it: “If you can give me full creative control to make it best and eye-catching video, how much can you expend in your budget?” Cheryl approved a second milestone the same day, logged as a change of initial idea. Creative flexibility and being paid fairly for it are not in tension. They just need saying out loud, early.
Round four: three passes to the right concept
My first pass, a full growing-garden scene, came back as good but too busy. My second, stripped back, was not really it. Cheryl then hand-sketched her own rough frames: flower shapes blocked in, a face with an arrow to it reading “MY FACE”, notes about seedlings and her style sheet. That is what a stuck concept needs: the client drawing what she can already see. Working from her frames rather than her adjectives got the next pass right.
My own two passes at the new concept, on one board.
Locking the detail
From her sketches the third pass landed: seedlings growing into blooming cosmos flowers, her illustrated face revealing itself as they open, a DSLR appearing in her hand, a bird and a butterfly settling on the blooms, the logo animating in last. I matched the wildlife to the exact species she sent links for (a Superb Fairy-wren and an Ulysses butterfly), and fixed the colour logic rather than deciding it frame by frame: living things in blue and black, flowers in her brand’s reds and pinks.
The board the finished piece was built to, and the two things it came from: Cheryl’s style guide, and her own frames.
CASE03
What shipped
A finished 2D brand intro: seedlings growing into blooming cosmos, the illustrated character revealed as the flowers open, the camera interaction, the bird and butterfly landing, and an animated Cherish Artz logo reveal to close, built to sit at the front of Cheryl’s video content.
The finished intro.
The animated logo was delivered as a standalone file as well, so it could be used on its own without pulling the whole intro in behind it.
The sequence was designed to carry a voice-over rather than on-screen wording. That followed directly from the pivot: the reference had been built on text and icons, and the whole point of the new concept was that it did not need them.
CASE04
Where it landed
Cheryl’s reaction on delivery was “Oh that is perfect! Thank you so much.” On the near-final cut a few days earlier: “Wow! How great does that look! I’m really happy with the text you used, I don’t think we need any effects.” Both milestones were released without dispute.
This is a small engagement on a site of much larger ones, and it is here for what it shows. The client got an original concept instead of a near-copy, and got it because the problem was raised while there was still time to change course rather than defended at delivery.
The same discipline runs through the larger projects here: say the uncomfortable thing early, price a change of direction instead of swallowing it, and keep iterating until what ships is the client’s actual idea rather than the brief they were able to write at the start.
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