Animation source content
For all their power, screenmates are usually easy for brands and agencies to produce. The production process consists of assembling animation sources, animation production, content channel management and application development and deployment.
The development process for the actual animation that runs in a screenmate can take different paths depending on the nature of the animation source material. The animated character development process can start completely from scratch, with the actual character being designed as a graphic prior to animation. It is more typical for an animation to start with a brand mascot type of character that has either limited animation or no animated actions. In either case, the character will have to be drawn for the desktop.
Some characters are either too photo-realistic or are originally developed as CGI animations. In this case, the characters cannot be hand animated and must be extracted from a "green-screen" or alpha-channel video source. It is critical that the source material contain all of the behaviors that the character is to display, as they generally cannot be built out of the video or CGI source.
Application development process
The first step in the screenmate development process is creation of the scaled character drawing, in which the character is drawn as a single image on the desktop for relative size comparisons. Due to screen redrawing, and the necessity for supporting older systems, character size and complexity has to be controlled.
Once the sized character has been approved, the walk cycle is developed. This is a simple animation of the character walking back and forth across the screen. Walking is the most iconic of character actions, and it is critical to get stakeholder buy-in at this stage before investing time into the next animated sequences. When this approval is in place, the remaining actions (typically 6 or 7) are developed.
Other aspects of the desktop application are developed parallel to the animated sequences, including the user interface, icons, content channel feeds, application functionality and landing pages. Technical issues for screenmates are usually relatively simple, although if there are integrated data feeds, there may need to be some discussion between the developer and client IT departments.
It is worth noting that due to platform differences, screenmates are a windows-only application.