Animation for an Energy Company

Creating a 2D Explainer Video for an Energy Company

Varkauden Aluelämpö needed an illustrative explainer animation for their website and social media to explain their “Digilämpö” (DigiHeat) service, targeting both individual consumers and housing cooperatives.

Based on a script provided by marketing agency Profitea, I created a warm, concise 2D animated explainer that entertainingly highlights the benefits of Digilämpö in a practical and concrete way.

Scope of Work

Visual identity concept and execution
Draft animation / animatic based on the script
2D animation creation assisted by AI
Audio design: voiceover and sound effects
Video editing and audio post-processing

Strong Recommendation

“Duoable is extremely professional, agile, and easy to work with. The final result is high quality, visually striking, and fits the client’s needs perfectly. A reliable, creative, and detail-oriented creator – I warmly recommend Duoable for a wide range of animation projects.”

Tea Stenberg, marketing agency Profitea

The AI-Assisted Animation Process

Scene Planning: What is the message?

A storyboard is developed based on the script, outlining how each scene can be visually realized. For instance: How do you illustrate the concept of “a heating plant generating heat”?

Visual Style Concept & Selection

Achieving the desired look usually requires some iteration and generation. I tested several visual styles and chose a calm, clear aesthetic that works well with the target audience and project goals. A spot-illustration style translates well across different video formats.

Prompt Engineering & Image Generation from Storyboards

Once the visual direction is locked down, prompts are crafted for each scene using tools like ChatGPT. This produces the initial starting image for each animation segment.

Animatic (Draft Video)

Once the scene content and visual style are roughly defined, I create an animatic (video storyboard). This helps evaluate pacing, the effectiveness of individual scenes, and the total duration. The animatic provides a clear preview for editing and reveals potential bottlenecks or gaps in the script early on.

Prompting & Generating Animations

Individual animations are generated from each source image. Video generation also typically requires extensive iteration, testing, and fine-tuning to achieve high-quality results.

Upscaling: Enhancing Video Quality

To deliver the highest possible resolution, the generated videos were upscaled using dedicated AI upscaling tools.

Background Music, Voiceover & Sound Effects

The audio environment is just as crucial as the visuals. I produced the background music and voiceovers using ElevenLabs, including subtle yet impactful sound effects like birds chirping or running water.

Video Editing

Once all raw assets are ready, the video is edited in Final Cut Pro. The editing pace and dynamic transitions make a massive impact on the finished product.

Leveraging AI in Visual Design

Using AI enables a much more agile workflow – drawing and animating every scene entirely by hand from scratch would take significantly longer, especially with many distinct animated actions. For example, generating initial concept art with AI gives projects a head start by allowing the visual identity to be finalized quickly.

However, AI cannot deliver a finished product on its own; the process demands substantial iteration, cleanup, and refinement. It is also critical to maintain visual consistency throughout the video. In addition to the visual work, editing and sound design still require hands-on manual expertise.

Traditional 3D Animation Supporting AI Video

In certain situations, 3D animation can streamline or complement AI-generated footage. This was the case in a scene depicting an uncomfortably hot bedroom.

Currently, AI performs best with relatively simple movement, and the rotation of an electric fan proved too complex to generate cleanly.

I decided to animate the fan using 3D software. The AI animation for the rest of the scene succeeded far better with the fan removed from the prompt, improving the overall visual quality.

I then rendered the 3D fan as a PNG image sequence and composited it into the final video.

Comparison: 3D Fan Animation vs. AI Animation

Having diverse tools in your creative toolkit means you are not entirely dependent on AI, giving you far greater control over both the workflow and the final output. This allows different technologies to complement each other rather than relying on a single solution.

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