FUTUREPROOF '26: IN THE FOLD
CONFERENCE OPENER PROOF OF CONCEPT – 2025 [ONGOING]
THE
BRIEF
We were challenged to create a new branding and conference opener for the FutureProof 2026 Conference. The client wanted something new and refreshing, different from the past years. With explosive type, dynamic animation, and collective chants, this conference opener visualizes how it feels to be a part of something bigger than yourself.
DETAILS
Client FutureProof Conference
Software After Effects, Cinema4D, Nuke, Procreate Dreams
Duration 0:50
Type 2D, 3D, tactile
No matter how much experience, you are inevitably brought into the fold of all animators before and after you.
STYLEFRAMES
ANIMATIC
It's fun to compare the final product to the animatic. Sometimes, it's super close to your vision and other times, it turns out quite different. It was definitely a lot of trial and error, but I hope you can see a lot of similarities between what we planned to do and what we ended up doing.
This project taught us a lot of things, amongst them, to be brave. We were afraid that this would be too much of an unconventional direction for a conference opener, we were afraid that we wouldn't know how to make the call outs and fortune tellers work.
That's why it's so important to work with people you trust. There were times where we didn't understand each other's vision, but we ultimately trusted each other's taste and gut.
SO. MANY.
KEYFRAMES.
EFFICIENCY & WORKFLOW
We had an extremely tight deadline on this project so we needed to optimize for edits and efficiency as much as possible. One of the solutions we implemented was using Cinema4D for shots that required some level of depth––for example, this page turning shot. I rendered this sequence out of Redshift using AOVs and Cryptomattes, which I later treated in After Effects to match the style of the rest of the animation seamlessly.
BREAKIN' IT
DOWN, BABY!
EFFECTORS & ANIMATION
TRIGGERS
AI BESTIEZ
EXPRESSIONS,
YEAH!
I built this rig for one of the last few shots in the piece, where the camera pans across a long line of papers folding one after the other. I wanted to make it so adjustments would be really easy to make, since I knew we would probably have to do a lot of back and forth with the overall timing of the piece.
With the help of ChatGPT, I came up with this string of expression code that essentially makes my null an “effector”, a feature that can be seen in softwares such as Cinema4D and Cavalry. A while back I had discovered an expression that allows you to read the value of any give image, called .sampleImage. You can connect this to any sort of property, for instance, the scale of a square.
I thought maybe I could find a way of connecting .sampleImage to the Time Remapping property of a precomp. This way, wherever the null moves, it will trigger the animation of the paper folding–essentially acting like an “effector”. This also meant we could keep this animation modular. If any changes have to be made, we would only need to do it from the module composition and change one or two keyframes which would carry onto the rest of the animation.
KEEPIN' IT MODULAR
DOWNLOAD THE FILE!
The way I was able to keep things modular while still having different looking papers on the screen was through the Essential Graphics panel on After Effects. Through expressions, I linked the text layers in a different composition to a Dropdown Menu Control. The best thing about this setup is that I could change this list of 24 names to whatever I wanted and it would update throughout the whole animation, as well as add new ones. It is a known fact that conferences usually have last minute changes or additions, so this set up makes things way easier on us!
If you want to take a look and dig through the file, click here!
BITS N' BOBS
Little CC Page Turn rig!
Optics Compensation + Warp = MVP (Most Valuable Perspective)
Frame by frame animation (by Bri)
Referencing our own footage (by Bri)
Type rig for the final shot!
LIVE ACTION & KEYING
Step 01: Green screen footage
Step 02: Keying in Nuke
Step 03: Composite onto animation
Huge thanks to Christian Huthmacher for helping us out with the shoot!
BREANDING & PROCESS
MIRO BOARD BRAINSTORMING!
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Bri came up with with this amazing and interactive idea for the attendees at FutureProof!
It's called the "infinite flipper". It's a type of origami fold that looks to be infinitely un-foldable. She came up with this solution for the conference schedule.
It's actually pretty simple to do – everyone would learn how to make their own infinite flipper at the conference kick-off!
MAKING OUR DESIGN 'OWNABLE'
The most important thing to us was to build a recognizable brand, something that people could associate with FutureProof immediately. This is what ultimately led us to the path of choosing one idea, the fold, and reinforcing it, expanding it and showing it over and over again!
CREDITS
