IS4S: Battle Story

A legendary employee of IS4S, Frank Battle, well into his 90’s, has already created a lasting legacy. In creating a new video to explain his impact, we interviewed those closest to him and built a foundation for his story. We then crafted illustrations of the man, the myth, the legend in a style unique to him. Full of life, color and excitement. These were then transformed into action through animation, creating scenes that spoke to who he is, provided context for stories we weren’t able to capture and created a foundation for storytelling we simply couldn’t do with live action alone.

Year

2025

What We Did

Video, Animation, Illustration, Concepting

The Story of Frank Battle

Frank Battle is a simple man. He’s driven by his desire to work hard, the loyalty to his company, and his commitment to his wife and family. Everyone calls him Mr. Battle; showing one of the highest levels of respect in the South. Mr. Battle built his life around positivity, perseverance and the pursuit of doing good. In the office, Mr. Battle created a clean and tidy space for everyone in the organization. A coffee talk with Mr. Battle could change your entire day. He would remind people to sit up straight, follow their hearts and work hard. And we hope that in some small way, we’ve helped capture the Mr. Battle-ness of his persona, while honoring the simple, hardworking and quiet man he was.

In addition to the video, we were tasked with creating the logo for the Battle Award. We referenced mountains and the sun to represent Frank’s pursuit of hopeful perseverance in the midst of challenging circumstance. And visually focused on how the continual cycle of sunrise and sunset reminds us of constant movement and pushing forward.

Behind the Process

Even with a tighter timeline, we still go through the design process starting with sketching characters and exploring illustration styles. Brennan, our wonderful designer and illustrator extraordinaire, took the lead on the character designs and explorations. This painterly style filled with color and light matched Frank’s story perfectly.

Storyboards are drawn in grayscale at first. From there, we refine details, color, and lighting. Next comes more refinement and adding details like texture as we work towards final design. This isn’t done alone—it’s a team effort to finish the rest of the storyboard and get everything prepped for animation.

One of the biggest challenges on this project was preserving the painterly quality of the original illustrations and finding ways to carry those unique brush strokes through to the final composite. We came up with this fun of way of wiggling some strokes together to recreate the appearance of a brush stroke, and used iterations of that technique to add shading throughout.

This project was rewarding because we got to use a range of techniques combining the live-action interviews with animation. Our amazing team collaborated on the 2D and 3D illustrations and animations, focused on bringing exciting techniques to the project and in the end, created a beautiful story that honored a man we’re a little bit better to know more about. Check out the full video below!