Celebrating the best of Anime
The Crunchyroll Anime Awards recognizes achievements for artistic and technical merits in the anime industry. This annual awards show encompasses four phases of marketing campaigns, an interactive voting period for fans, and culminates into a live broadcast awards show in Tokyo, Japan.
Creative Goal:
To elevate the brand identity and create a robust style guide that could provide dimensionality and elegance across multi-channel marketing efforts and the live event presence.
lIVE WEBSITE: LINK
Role: Art Director
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Concept Design + Art Direction
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Style Guide Creation
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Creative Strategy
Partnered with:
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C-Level Stakeholders, International Execs
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Marketing, Events, Social, Paid Media, Lifecycle, Product
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External Designers, Licensors & Production Companies
ELEVATING THE BRAND
The 2023 Crunchyroll Anime Awards art direction had an omni-present ribbon that encompassed all touchpoints of the event from the marketing assets, to the printed assets, to the live-show on-stage screens. For 2024, the team refined the style guide with simpler, more refined elements that would allow the anime intellectual properties to shine in the spotlight.
2022 Style Guide Excerpts
RIBBON DEVELOPMENT
In 2023, we designed the hero ribbon to represent anime and its community - its artistic medium, fluidity, and vibrancy. For 2024, the goal was to give the hero ribbon more personality in its flow and movement, as well as its visual properties - we wanted the ribbon to act as a "host" for the show and the anime studios being honored. The team went through various iterations, exploring a more orange hued element in both 2D illustrative cel-animation style as well as a more crystal, 3D computer-generated ribbon. Ultimately we landed on a ribbon style that exuded the essence of anime in its personality and flow while remaining prestigious and elegant to honor the true anime creators.
2023 Ribbon
Inspiration Guidelines
Artist Explorations
Final Ribbon
Secondary Anime Elements
In order to add dimensionality and diversity across the thousands of assets created for the duration of the campaign, the team raked through hundreds of anime references
ANIME ELEMENTS DEVELOPMENT
In addition to honoring the art as a whole with the ribbon, the team wanted to represent the many different genres of anime with additional elements that would also allow for greater variety in the thousands of assets produced for the show. The team explored countless examples of elements across anime, from more direct to more textural representations, and landed on element-inspired designs subtle enough to hint at the essence of anime without trying to be anime (leaving the true anime style to the creators).
Element References
Early Explorations
Final Style Guide
FINAL ASSETS
2024 Website Screenshot
2024 Website Screenshot
Final Motion Examples
Example Frames
