Explainer Video · Whiteboard Animation · Character Design · Montpellier
Click & Collect — Hand-Drawn Explainer Video for Web Libre Consulting
A busy shop, ringing telephones and an increasingly impatient queue: a familiar situation became the starting point for explaining a digital retail service.
For Web Libre Consulting in Montpellier, I created a French-language explainer introducing Click & Collect ++. Original characters, hand-drawn illustration and whiteboard-style animation take viewers from the pressures of ordering in person to a clearer journey through digital ordering and collection at the shop.
Client: Web Libre Consulting, Montpellier · Solution: Click & Collect ++ · Language: French
Concept, storyboards, illustration, animation, sound design & voiceover direction: Ian David Marsden
Watch the finished explainer
The film combines custom illustration, scene transitions, selective character movement, French narration and sound effects to explain the service through an everyday customer experience.
Explaining the service through the customer journey
The story begins at the counter. A shopkeeper is trying to answer telephone calls while serving customers; a chef needs attention, and the queue is growing. Expressions, posture and small visual details make the frustration understandable before the service itself is introduced.
A central couple carries the narrative forward. Their orange clothing details distinguish them from the surrounding customers and help viewers follow them between scenes. The film then moves through the alternative experience: accessing the service digitally, placing an order and collecting it from the retailer.
This problem-and-solution structure gives the explanation a clear purpose. The digital process is connected to something tangible: the customer’s time, the retailer’s workload and the moment an order changes hands. Different shop symbols also broaden the setting beyond a single food outlet.
From rough sketches to an annotated storyboard
I developed the concept through rough scene sketches and sequential storyboards. At this stage, the important decisions concern staging, expressions, framing and narrative continuity: who the viewer notices first, how the queue is revealed and how one situation leads into the next.
The more developed storyboard adds production instructions in French. Arrows specify lateral movement, notes identify sound cues and orange and yellow accents indicate the intended visual emphasis. These sheets connect the drawings with the animation and audio work that follows.
Original characters and vector illustration
I created the characters specifically for the film. Different silhouettes, faces, hairstyles and accessories make the queue feel populated by individuals. Their expressions establish the emotional contrast between the opening frustration and the later collection scene.
The finished artwork was developed in Adobe Illustrator, preserving the character of the hand-drawn line within clean vector illustrations. Black contours keep the scenes readable against white, while selective orange and yellow accents identify the protagonists, devices and important actions.
The wider scene compositions extend beyond their visible framing. This supports movement through the artwork, allowing the narrative to shift from the shopkeeper to the waiting customers and then to the main couple. The illustrations were therefore composed as material for a moving sequence as well as individual images.
Making the digital process visible
A digital service can be difficult to explain through interfaces alone. Here, the illustrations keep the people and situations in view. A desktop user, a couple with a tablet and a person using a smartphone while walking show how the service fits into everyday routines.
A closer mobile-access scene groups the smartphone, platform symbols, retail imagery and a QR code into a single explanation. The stronger yellow background gives this moment a different visual emphasis within the predominantly white film.
Whiteboard-style animation, French voiceover and sound
The animation combines the clarity of a whiteboard-style presentation with sliding transitions, selective character movement and motion graphics. The approach keeps attention on the explanation while giving the illustrated scenes rhythm and continuity.
I handled animation and editing using Adobe After Effects and Premiere, with audio work in Logic Pro. Sound design included footsteps and effects supporting the action. Telephone interruptions and the cash-register cue were already considered in the storyboard, so audio contributed to the narrative structure from the planning stage.
I also directed the professional French voiceover, coordinating narration with the pace of the visual explanation. Subtitle synchronisation and SRT export formed part of the delivery, providing a separate timed-text file alongside the video production work.
Project scope & deliverables
- Concept development and visual narrative: translating the Click & Collect proposition into a sequence moving from an overloaded shop counter to digital ordering and collection.
- Storyboard design: rough scene exploration, sequential panels, character staging, framing, transition directions and annotated sound cues.
- Original character design and hand-drawn illustration: a distinctive retail cast, recurring protagonists, expressive poses, shop environments and supporting visual symbols.
- Final vector artwork and scene layout: Adobe Illustrator artwork with consistent line work, selective colour and compositions prepared for the film’s framing and movement.
- Animation, motion graphics and editing: whiteboard-style presentation, sliding scene transitions and selective movement, produced using Adobe After Effects and Premiere.
- Sound design: audio work in Logic Pro, including footsteps and effects supporting the illustrated action.
- French voiceover direction: direction of a professional voice artist and coordination of narration with the visual sequence.
- Subtitle preparation: subtitle synchronisation and SRT export.
Explore the film and its illustrated world
Hand-drawn explainer videos for technology and services
A useful explainer connects a service with the people who use it. Original illustration and character-led animation can make a customer journey, digital product or unfamiliar process easier to follow, giving viewers a situation they recognise and a clear sequence of actions.
Based in Claret, near Montpellier, I work with businesses, digital agencies, consulting firms and technology companies on illustrated explainer videos, whiteboard-style animation and motion graphics. I collaborate in French, English and German, with projects shaped around the subject, audience and communication goal.
Explore my hand-drawn explainer video and animation services, or browse the case studies for more examples of illustration and visual storytelling in practice.
