The Project Brief
Sinova Global operates the Horse Creek mine just outside Golden, British Columbia – one of Canada’s leading sources of high-grade silica. They came to us at an interesting moment: the mine had begun full operations and the company was on track to become one of the first carbon-neutral mines in Canada. That’s a genuinely compelling story, but it’s a story that requires the right visual treatment to land.
Industrial and resource companies often struggle with video because the physical reality of a mine – heavy equipment, dust, extraction – can work against the message they’re trying to send. Sinova needed something that could communicate the scale and credibility of their operation while keeping the sustainability narrative front and centre. Full 2D animation was the right answer. It let us control exactly what the audience sees and focuses on, building a visual world that reflected Sinova’s values rather than just documenting their infrastructure.
The Script & Storyboard
We opened the project with a series of brainstorming and research sessions with the Sinova team to map out the audience, the tone, and the key messages the video needed to carry. The script was developed from those sessions and refined through review cycles until the language felt right for Sinova’s stakeholders – clear enough for a general audience, specific enough to be credible with investors and industry partners.
Once the script was approved, we moved into visual development. The process starts with rough sketches to establish structure and flow, then moves into digital style frames – a handful of finished illustrations that define the look of the entire piece before a single scene is animated. Getting client sign-off on style frames is one of the most important steps in an animation project. It means everyone is aligned on the visual language before the expensive work begins, which eliminates the most common source of costly late-stage revisions.
From the approved style frames, we assembled an animatic – the still illustrations cut to the narration and music, timed out to match the final edit. An animatic gives the client the clearest possible preview of the finished piece and surfaces any pacing or structural issues while they’re still cheap to fix.
Illustrations & Animation
With the animatic approved, we moved into full production. Illustration was handled by Boris Moshkov, whose work gave the piece a clean, modern visual style that balanced the industrial subject matter with Sinova’s forward-looking environmental positioning. Each scene was then built and animated in After Effects, with the goal of keeping the visual flow purposeful from start to finish – always moving, never lingering on any one element long enough to lose the audience’s attention.
The animation approach on this project was deliberate: no camera cuts for the sake of it, no visual complexity that doesn’t serve the story. For a 2D animation brand film aimed at communicating credibility and environmental responsibility, restraint in the animation actually does more work than flash. The result is a piece that feels as considered as the company it represents.
The Finalé
Client: Sinova Global
Script: Andrew Whal
Art Director: Atlee James
Illustration: Boris Moshkov
Animation: Atlee James