Turn-in
Celebrations
What a fun project this was. Rarely do I get the green light to let my imagination run wild, but Microsoft's "Turn-In Celebrations" are nothing short of a motion designer's playground. We started off with a couple of experiments, getting animations running in-product with Lottie. Then we pushed the envelope. Bigger, more bombastic animations were given the thumbs up, and we let loose.
Colorful creatures, over-the-top expressions, and plenty of glitter and rainbows greeted millions of students at Microsoft-powered schools all around the world when our animations launched on the Teams Assignments app. Whenever a student submitted their work, *poof!* A dragon would swoop in and light their assignment ablaze (for just a moment), or a glittery unicorn would emerge from a rainbow waterfall to grace their screen.
The "Turn-In Celebrations" were an instant hit with students and educators. Social media posts excitedly shared which character was revealed to them when they submitted their homework for that day, and we received ideas for new animations from all corners of the internet (and the office!). On a trip to Atlanta to film an Educator Spotlight video, we spoke firsthand with students eager to share their enthusiasm about the animations, and were able to sketch some of their ideas to help bring them to life.
The educator we were interviewing was also an inspiration for one of our animations, and her response to seeing her Sloth appear in Teams was to get a tattoo of our design. Click here to see that video project that I filmed and edited.
In a short amount of time, we had a decent little catalog of celebratory animations for students. But soon, Microsoft's branding would change, and our 2D space where we'd become comfortable in designing and animating Lottie characters would have to make its way into the third dimension to align with the rest of our branding. However, Lottie files rely on vector graphics, and a 3D pipeline would flat-out not be supported. So I did some more experimenting.
After much trial and error (and shopping around for alternatives to Lottie at the time), we discovered a pipeline that incorporated visual trickery with gradients and blurs that mimicked light and shadow seen exclusively in 3D, but in a completely 2D, Lottie-friendly file.
These file sizes were small and efficient, but looked aligned with Microsoft's new 3D aesthetic that set itself apart from competitors. And best of all? It gave us another crack at Turn-In Celebrations again. We set out to explore new characters and creatures to introduce to classrooms while pushing the boundaries of what Lottie could support yet again.
Soon, the Turn-In Celebrations V2 were born.