Synergy: Customer Education Series
- Date2026
- ClientSynergy
- CategoryAnimation / Advanced 2D / Educational Series
- My TeamNanda Gunnink, Anja Mahlberg, Daniel Pita-Wilson
Synergy · Advanced 2D animation · 2026
Four animated films for Synergy, built to make solar, batteries, electric vehicles and Virtual Power Plants relevant to everyday WA families. The videos are created to educate its audience and connect with the human behaviours around power and usage.
01 Closing frame, What is a Virtual Power Plant
02 One world across four films: the same coast, the same streets, the same community.
Description
Western Australia has one of the highest rates of rooftop solar in the country, and household batteries are following fast. For Synergy that means they need to communicate to everyday WA families about the energy use and storage: helping households understand how the power they make and store at home fits into the wider grid.
The subject matter is distributed energy, household assets and Virtual Power Plants. The audience is families at the kitchen table. Four films, each about a minute, no dumbing down of content but making it easy to understand and digest as the main purpose.
Client and challenge
Synergy is Western Australia’s state-owned electricity generator and retailer, and the name most households in the state see on their bill.
However their previous visuals were lacking the visual Western Australian connection and authenticity. The main importance was to make the animations succinct, digestible and resonate with their customer audience.
From rough boards to final frames
Every film started as a storyboard, went through styleframes, then animation, with two rounds of feedback before anything was animated. Here is one idea carried all the way through, in the Virtual Power Plant film.
03 The idea that carries the film: every roof is part of one system. Board, then styleframe, then the frame that went to air.
The Storyboard, through its versions
Boards went to Synergy twice before a frame was animated. Panel ten of this board, version two and then version three.
04 The process and revisions, same beat and amount of screen time. V2 was too complex, V3 visually shows the traditional power plant instantly.
05 A stage direction on top, a rough frame in the middle, the line of script underneath. “Graphics not final design” is printed on every panel, so there is never a doubt about what is being signed off.
Styleframes
Before anything moves, the look gets tested as stills: colour, line weight, how much detail a background can carry without pulling focus off the people.
06 The first pass and the final frame. The room, the people and the light are the same; the detail, the palette and the staging are resolved.
Household energy assets, the title treatment that opens film one
Storyboard scene nine in full colour: the split screen that brings solar, battery and electric vehicle into one frame
Deliverables
Four Advanced 2D animated videos, each start with one question and are delivered in different ratios so the videos can run on digital, mobile and also without sound. Reversions to each platform is key to optimising contents usage.
16:9
4:5
9:1607 Each animation is delivered in 3 ratios and versions.
Getting the detail right
Simple pictures of complex systems still have to be correct. The appliances drawing on stored energy are the ones a real household runs at that hour. When a film explains grid instability, the light matches the real afternoon, around five or six o’clock, as solar output falls away.
Every round went past Synergy’s own experts before it moved forward, which is where most of the accuracy came from.
08 The hottest day, the cloudy day at home, then the street joining a Virtual Power Plant. Motion carried most of the explanation.
The Four Animations
09 Used across YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram
Outcome
The series is live across digital platforms and is embedded across parts of their site. It sits in a playlist on Synergy’s YouTube channel and has run on silent screens at an expo, which is where the burned-in captions earn their place.
Synergy launched it publicly in September as the Our Energy video series, saying the aim was to give customers clear, accessible information to make informed decisions as they explore electrification and new energy technologies, with a paid and organic campaign continuing to December.
Synergy is already looking at how to reuse the series next year for other distributed energy work.
That was the point of building one consistent world. One community, the same streets, the same world. It keeps working after its first campaign.