The Early Character Designs
Since the beginning of our process, we knew we wanted to create a character that was friendly, approachable, and human-like, but not to the point of an uncanny-valley feeling. The design base was also intended to be very simple in order to easily customize it to the consumer's whim. We had come up with names that are reminiscent of a talkative individual as this is a conversation companion–some of the notable contributions were Chatti or Chatterbox, reflective of the design's box-like appearance. We ended up choosing Gabbi, a sweet sounding name pulled from the word gabby, meaning a excessively or annoyingly talkative person, but we wanted to put a positive spin on it.
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Gabbi Visual Identity
The Gabbi visual identity is intended to have a techy, yet approachable and friendly appearance. The color palette has soothing shades like green, blue, purple, and pink. The typeface choices, Finalsix and Pixer, reinforce that techy vibe. The sparkles are a prominent graphic element due to them being a symbol of artificial intelligence. The expression sheet and character turnaround create consistency within Gabbi's character design throughout all deliverables.
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The User Journey
In our user journey map, we established a general persona who we felt reflected Gabbi's use case and we imagined what he would be doing in order to discover and explore the purchase of a Gabbi. Using this framework helped us figure out features we added to the commerical, website, and even Gabbi's own design and features.
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Planning the Commercial
Before creating the final commercial, we created a storyboard. This was to get an idea of what each scene would like, including the animation style, color, alongside a script that would eventually become the commercial's voiceover. Then we pieced this storyboard into a animatic to determine the pacing of each scene and how it would sync with the associated audio. Then we split up the work, each animating a handful of scenes in Adobe After Effects, later stitching them together into the full commercial with Premiere Pro. We used an ai-based application for the voice-over and surprise, I am the voice of Gabbi ;)
