Penne pasta animation: Frame-by-frame animated food illustration video

I created this frame-by-frame penne pasta animation in Procreate. It’s basically a fictional illustrated video ad, promoting a premium-quality penne made by an imaginary Italian pasta brand, called Piatti.

What is Piatti?

If you’ve been to Italy, you probably know that “piatti” is the Italian word for “plates” in English. That is why at the end of the video you’ll hear the sound of clinking plates, sort of an audio signature for this imaginary brand!

Piatti is a fictional Italian food brand that I came up with for the sake of creating this demo food animation. My hope is to present Italian pasta brands – like De Cecco, Divella, and Rummo – with the idea of creating short animated brand videos for their social media feeds, especially on Pinterest.

Future videos can feature food illustrations with a colour palette that corresponds with the client’s branding, in this case, the real-life Italian agri-food brand I’d be collaborating with. I can make hand-drawn animations that display the brand’s logo at the end of the animation. Or, it can be positioned to the top or bottom of the screen throughout the video, depending on the client’s preferences.

Created in 1824, this imaginary brand is home to different Italian agri-food products. They make pasta, pesto, and Made-in-Italy sauces. Piatti’s pasta range includes spaghetti, penne, lasagne, and other pasta shapes. Their sauces, on the other hand, comprise various basil and tomato pestos, “passata di pomodoro” (uncooked tomato purée), and “concentrato di pomodoro” (concentrated tomato paste).

Like many real-life Italian food brands – such as Mutti, Barilla, and La Molisana – Piatti has a strong agri-food heritage that defines its DNA, making it a household staple.

About this penne pasta animation

This is a 7-second frame-by-frame illustration animation that I created in Procreate on the iPad Pro. After exporting it as an MP4 file, I added royalty-free music using a different video editing app.

As a two-dimensional hand-drawn animation, it has an unmistakable handmade feel that stands in sharp contrast with the polished branded videos typically shot with digital cameras or iPhones.

This is basically the unique selling point (USP) of hand-drawn animations. They cannot be mimicked by cameras and have a special look and feel to them.

As mentioned earlier, my aim from this exercise is to collaborate with Italian food brands to create a series of short animations that celebrate their products and show them in a different, whimsical light. After all, everyone loves 2D animation. It reminds us of the nostalgic vintage cartoons of the 20th century, handmade and imperfect as they were!

Food illustrations: Cooking and enjoying a plate of penne

In this post, you’ll see a few still frames from my Italian penne animation. They’re basically line illustrations depicting the main stages of cooking and then enjoying the penne pasta.

The first food illustration shows the imaginary Piatti penne packet sitting on a kitchen counter. Next to it lie other Italian kitchen tools, a pepper grinder, and a pot containing a basil plant.

Then there is another still frame of penne being emptied into a pot of boiling water to be cooked. In the animation it comes with accompanying sound effects to boot.

A zoomed in illustration of a fork picking up a few penne cylinders from a plate concludes the scene. This informs the viewer that someone is now eating and enjoying the cooked penne.

At the very end of the short clip, Piatti’s fictional logo shows up and then fades out.

For more food illustration animations, please see my Hand-Drawn Animation page. Take care for now and hope to see you in my next post!