RSD Video Showreel Animation Design

An agency showreel built to show the full range of RSD’s work in one sitting, and a lesson in directing a motion studio.

Roles:

Design Lead, Art Direction, Production Management

Collaboration:

  • RSD Marketing principal agency owners

  • Zelios (animation production, Ukraine)

Platform:

Video and web, responsive

Deliverables:

  • Showreel storyboard and animation direction (Figma)

  • Animation walkthrough presented to leadership (PDF)

  • Curated project archive with high-resolution imagery and custom mockups

  • Animation production management and revision rounds (Frame.io)

  • Refreshed RSD website (Squarespace)

Timeline:

6 Months

Responsibilities: 

  • Led concept development and storyboarding from leadership’s messaging

  • Ran brainstorming sessions with the agency owners in Freeform to work out the order, the pacing, and the look

  • Audited the agency archive and picked what made the reel: the strongest work, with every service line covered

  • Designed all visual mockups, layouts, and the animation flow

  • Researched and selected the animation studio, then directed production asynchronously across a 7-hour time difference

  • Designed and built the refreshed website the reel launched on

OBJECTIVE

RSD had 40 years behind it and clients like Bayer and Colgate. In-store displays, social campaigns, conference environments, packaging, print, video.

All of it lived in folders.

When a prospective client asked what the agency did, they got a conversation and a link. That meant the range of work only landed if someone was patient enough to sit through it. Leadership wanted a new-business tool: something that answered the question before anyone had to ask it.

Two deliverables came out of that. A showreel the agency could open a pitch with, and a website refresh to give it somewhere to live.

Leadership handed me the messaging. A paragraph of agency copy: 40 years, 23,000 projects, clients like Bayer and Colgate who had stayed 30 years, quality creative delivered on time and on budget.

It read fine on a page. It wasn’t going to survive being read aloud over moving pictures.

PROCESS

So the first job was taking it apart. I ran brainstorming sessions with the agency owners in Freeform and broke the paragraph into frames: where a line lands, how long it holds, and what plays underneath it. “Quality creative, on time and on budget” became 3 separate beats, each one carrying work behind it. The reel makes the claim at the top, proves it in the middle, and says it again at the close.

Brainstorm 1 – Concept messaging and showreel examples

The original messaging on the left. On the right, the same copy broken into storyboard frames with visual direction for each beat.

Brainstorm board for the RSD showreel. Reference video and website examples on the left, the original agency messaging in the middle, the same copy broken into a 12-frame revised storyboard on the right, and website wireframes below.
Brainstorm board for the RSD showreel. Reference video and website examples on the left, the original agency messaging in the middle, the same copy broken into a 12-frame revised storyboard on the right, and website wireframes below.

Then the archive. I sorted it against 2 filters: which work was strongest, and whether every service RSD sells showed up.

CURATION

They didn’t fight each other. The best work already covered the range, so the reel could lead with quality without quietly dropping a service line. So the cut came down to order. That’s why the reel moves between print, in-store, digital, and event work instead of reading like a checklist.

From there, I built the storyboard in Figma and pulled high-resolution imagery and custom mockups for every project that made it in.

Showreel storyboard

The full showreel storyboard, with rows of work for Colgate, Bayer, MetLife and others across in-store displays, print, digital and conference events.
The full showreel storyboard, with rows of work for Colgate, Bayer, MetLife and others across in-store displays, print, digital and conference events.

I designed the motion plan before anything moved: the type, the color, the type-on effect that builds each number a character at a time, and how the project grids assemble and clear between beats.

ANIMATION

Three full storyboard variants came out of that, tested against the same messaging in black, blue, and red. Seeing them side by side settled it.

Brainstorm 2 – Animation concepts

Three storyboard treatments against the same beats.

Three animation treatments for the same beats, in black, red and blue. Each builds the line “You want quality creative, on time, and on budget,” then the 40 years and 23 thousand projects counts.
Three animation treatments for the same beats, in black, red and blue. Each builds the line “You want quality creative, on time, and on budget,” then the 40 years and 23 thousand projects counts.

I gave the Zelios team a PDF walkthrough of the animation beat by beat. They took the plan and improved on it.

PRODUCTION

I sent the design files and the full storyboard in Figma too, with the images I’d picked sorted into the frames they belonged to. Revisions ran through Frame.io.

Several of my animation ideas came back revised: transitions smoothed, timing reworked, the flow between beats tightened. The reel moved with a polish I couldn’t have spec’d. Motion at that level is their craft, and I took their revisions. Across a 7-hour gap and a fully asynchronous process, nothing slipped.

RESULTS

The reel shipped, and the refreshed site I built for it went live. RSD got what it asked for: one link that answers what the agency does, without a meeting.

The goal was new business. No numbers came back to me on whether it drove any, so I can’t tell you what it won.

I’d take 2 things from it again. I was trusted to go through the agency’s archive and decide, on my judgment alone, what represents 40 years of work. And I handed a plan to a studio better at the craft than I am and watched them improve on it.

Usually I’m the one making the thing. Here my job was writing a brief good enough for Zelios to push past. I want more of that work, on any project where someone else does the building.

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