Harnessing the power of Adobe Firefly Generative AI to create a tv spot and supplemental ads for the Academy of Art University, sponsored by Adobe
This department capstone project was a collaboration between the Department of and Adobe, where students across multiple disciplines collaborate together to create a cohesive product. This experience was an exciting learning experience for me to use cutting edge AI technology that completely transformed the design process. It not only allowed me to leverage my creative skills but also honed my ability to creatively problem-solve and collaborate effectively across disciplines.
Role: Product Designer, Visual Designer
Client: Academy of Art University & Adobe
Duration: 4 months
Tools: Figma, Adobe Firefly, Photoshop, Illustrator, AfterEffects, Adobe Stock
Frameworks: Interdepartmental collaboration, Storyboarding, Brainstorming, Public Speaking, Design & Animation
In recent years, San Francisco has begun receiving a bad repution - people associate the city with increased crime, gentrification, and other social issues. However, the city is still a hub of innovation, creativity, and beauty. How can we redefine people's perception of the city?
Using the power of Adobe Firefly Generative AI and the Adobe Creative Suite, our interdisciplinary team designed, from sketch to conception, an animated tv advertisement that positioned the Academy of Art University and Adobe as catalysts for creative brilliance, seamlessly intertwining artists' journeys with San Francisco's innovative legacy.
This campaign aims to highlight the Academy's diverse departments, influential alumni, and showcase Adobe Firefly's transformative features, emphasizing that the journey begins with the first click of a button.
The team at Adobe presented this award to our team for having the overall best performance that stood out in creativity, overall impact, and seamless execution.
Our team's success in winning this award is a testament to our dedication to delivering high-quality work under tight deadlines and our cohesive collaboration that made our project stand out.
Rough cut and animation effects by my teammates.
Final edit and timing to music by myself.
The "Press Play" campaign by the Academy of Art University is an open invitation to aspiring artists to become the protagonists of their creative journey.
Each press, click, and tap initiates the start of your unique journey within the vibrant heart of San Francisco. The Academy is not just a school, it is the catalyst to your future.
At the Academy, you will become a visionary behind the aesthetic experiences that shape the world. Press play to let your adventure begin. It Starts Here.
We started this project firstly by brainstorming ideas, which included many group sessions just spitballing ideas at each other and iterating on those ideas. Once we landed on a big idea, we began by writing the story script, designing each character, and hand sketching rough designs for the storyboard frames.
Next, we generated the storyboard images using AI image generation in Adobe Firefly. This storyboard is the culmination of our big idea, and we used it as a springboard for the rest of our campaign. Every frame in the storyboard was created using the Adobe Firefly generative AI tool.
We intentionally designed the different characters for the story to represent the diverse, talented students at AAU. In order from beginning to end, we have: Skyler the photographer, Sam the industrial designer, Ivan the architect, Brad the sound designer, Olivia the fashion designer, and Jessica the movie director.
We chose to use an illustrative style for the images so that the story emphasizes that each character is the protagonist of their creative journey.
Lessons Learned:
During this process, we initially struggled to generate images with a consistent style, characters, and compositional layout. We were able to fix some of these problems once we figured out how to upload an image as a style reference, but we were still left with continuity issues between each character’s appearance. Unfortunately, we had to let go of our original idea of having an overhead view of the “Press Play” button transitioning between each character’s story because of Firefly’s limitations. However, we appreciated how using Firefly sped up the storyboarding process which we completed in two weeks.
Once the storyboard was developed, we put each storyboard frame into Photoshop to touch-up the details.
Because of our thorough storyboard, we already had a vision for the scene transitions in the final video, which would be based on each character pressing a big red button on their creative tool. One key detail we had to touch-up was adding a big red button on the tool that each designer uses because Firefly wasn't able to generate the granular detail we wanted.
We also had separate each object into different layers. When we separated the main character from the background, we used generative fill in photoshop to fill in the empty background space. This step was necessary to prep the frames for animation.
Finally, we imported each frame's Photoshop file into AfterEffects to animate each frame, add visual and sound effects, and sync to music to create the final video for the video, bringing our ideas to life. This step required a lot of attention to detail, syncing the frames perfectly with audio and visual effects.
Our project culminated in a presentation to leadership at Adobe where we described our creative vision, our creative process, and showcased our final deliverable. This was a truly unforgettable memory, and I'm so proud of the hard work and collaboration our team dedicated to successfully design this project to life.
This project was a challenging but rewarding experience for me. My favorite part of the project was learning how to use Generative AI as a powerful tool in the storyboarding and sketching process. In some moments, generative AI was a very powerful tool that allowed us to quickly have our vision come to life. However, there were new challenges to the creative process due to the current limitations of generative AI.
I also learned a lot about brand strategy and advertising strategy. I enjoyed working collaboratively with a group to brainstorm ideas and solve challenges together. It was very rewarding to present our final project to the Adobe team and to the school president. The team at Adobe was interested in how we were able to use Firefly as a storyboarding tool, and they appreciated the feedback we gave about the pros and cons of using Firefly in the creative process.