AI chat is single-player. Sauna made it multiplayer.
Spaces let you pull a coworker into a conversation you'd already had with the AI - full history, prompts, answers, everything. Useful, but unfamiliar: nobody had seen it, and nobody was asking for it. The launch video had to make a strange idea feel obvious before it could make it feel valuable.
Client: Sauna by Wordware
• Visual asset creation • Motion Design • Sound Design •
About the project
THE PRODUCT
Sauna is the main product of Wordware, the San Francisco team behind the largest seed round in YC history. It's an AI assistant a whole team works in. Spaces was its new feature: pull a coworker into a conversation you already had with the AI. They see the whole thread — and if the AI got something wrong three messages back, they say so and it corrects itself in front of everyone.
THE PROBLEM
AI chats are usually associated with simple chat interfaces where we interact with AI on our own. Sauna created something unique - the first multiplayer AI, where you and your colleagues can work together in the same chat, with all the information in one place.
MY PART
The Sauna team wrote the script. My job was to turn it into an animation that anyone could understand, even someone outside the industry. I was also responsible for consulting on the content - deciding what could actually work and interest the audience, and what might be unnecessary information that doesn’t add anything to the story.
In the early stages, I created the storyboard, showing how each scene would look. Once it was approved,
I moved on to animating each scene in After Effects by hand, focusing on creating the strongest possible visual impact and keeping the viewer’s attention. The final stage was editing the full animation and adding sound design, which helped bring the whole piece to life.
Design Decisions
To keep the viewer’s attention as much as possible at the beginning, I chose to show screenshots of real social media posts where people discuss concerning AI-related trends - for example, worries that AI will take people’s jobs. This is a deliberate choice designed to capture the viewer’s attention from the very first moments by using content that naturally sparks curiosity and makes people want to keep watching.
Another challenge was the timing. The client wanted the animation to be as short as possible, while still including the most important and key information. My role here was also to carefully select what to keep and what to remove - which elements were essential, which could be left out, and how to present the information in the clearest way possible while keeping the animation as short as possible.
It’s worth paying attention to the changing numbers - the number increases to $112.4M. This shows that the issue Sebastian found in the animation is real. Once he notices and corrects it, the numbers start changing accordingly.
An interesting detail is the final scene. First, we see Sebastian, with the AI-native symbol - Sauna’s symbol - appearing next to him. A moment later, we see the large Sauna logo in the same place. But this time, instead of apps connected to it, we see people. This is a simple way to show what shared context means: at first, one user is working with one AI application, but now everyone can use the same shared context through a single application.
How I work
I worked closely with the Sauna team to discuss and refine the details of the animation.
When designing, I always ask myself: which parts of the animation are the most important? What will be interesting to our target audience? What needs to be included to capture their attention?
Part of my job is also to think about which elements are unnecessary or don’t add anything to the story, and can therefore be removed. The key is to create something that is simple and easy to understand - so that even a non-technical user can quickly understand the product, relate to the problem, and feel genuinely interested in learning more about it and eventually using or buying the product.
Explore more motion projects ➔
AI chat is single-player. Sauna made it multiplayer.
Spaces let you pull a coworker into a conversation you'd already had with the AI - full history, prompts, answers, everything. Useful, but unfamiliar: nobody had seen it, and nobody was asking for it. The launch video had to make a strange idea feel obvious before it could make it feel valuable.
Client: Sauna by Wordware - San Francisco
• Visual asset creation • Motion Design • Sound Design •
One of four animations produced across a five-week collaboration.
About the Project
THE PRODUCT
Sauna is the main product of Wordware, the San Francisco team behind the largest seed round in YC history. It's an AI assistant a whole team works in. Spaces was its new feature: pull a coworker into a conversation you already had with the AI. They see the whole thread - and if the AI got something wrong three messages back, they say so and it corrects itself in front of everyone.
THE PROBLEM
AI chats are usually associated with simple chat interfaces where we interact with AI on our own. Sauna created something unique - the first multiplayer AI, where you and your colleagues can work together in the same chat, with all the information in one place.
MY PART
The Sauna team wrote the script. My job was to turn it into an animation that anyone could understand, even someone outside the industry. I was also responsible for consulting on the content - deciding what could actually work and interest the audience, and what might be unnecessary information that doesn’t add anything to the story.
In the early stages, I created the storyboard, showing how each scene would look. Once it was approved,
I moved on to animating each scene in After Effects by hand, focusing on creating the strongest possible visual impact and keeping the viewer’s attention. The final stage was editing the full animation and adding sound design, which helped bring the whole piece to life.
Design Decisions
To keep the viewer’s attention as much as possible at the beginning, I chose to show screenshots of real social media posts where people discuss concerning AI-related trends - for example, worries that AI will take people’s jobs. This is a deliberate choice designed to capture the viewer’s attention from the very first moments by using content that naturally sparks curiosity and makes people want to keep watching.
Another challenge was the timing. The client wanted the animation to be as short as possible, while still including the most important and key information. My role here was also to carefully select what to keep and what to remove - which elements were essential, which could be left out, and how to present the information in the clearest way possible while keeping the animation as short as possible.
It’s worth paying attention to the changing numbers = the number increases to $112.4M. This shows that the issue Sebastian found in the animation is real. Once he notices and corrects it, the numbers start changing accordingly.
An interesting detail is the final scene. First, we see Sebastian, with the AI-native symbol - Sauna’s symbol - appearing next to him. A moment later, we see the large Sauna logo in the same place. But this time, instead of apps connected to it, we see people. This is a simple way to show what shared context means: at first, one user is working with one AI application, but now everyone can use the same shared context through a single application.
How I work
I worked closely with the Sauna team to discuss and refine the details of the animation.
When designing, I always ask myself: which parts of the animation are the most important? What will be interesting to our target audience? What needs to be included to capture their attention?
Part of my job is also to think about which elements are unnecessary or don’t add anything to the story, and can therefore be removed. The key is to create something that is simple and easy to understand - so that even a non-technical user can quickly understand the product, relate to the problem, and feel genuinely interested in learning more about it and eventually using or buying the product.
Explore more motion projects ➔