Animated prep guides that customers follow

Bare, clean, empty metal

A powder coater can only coat bare, clean, empty metal. What turns up at the counter is often something else. A brake caliper still full of fluid, with the pistons and seals inside. A supercharger with its sensors on and coolant in the intercooler. Small parts loose in a box with no idea which corner of the car they came from. Before any powder goes on, someone has to strip it, drain it and clean it.

Iron Rainbow wanted customers to arrive with parts ready to coat, and asked for a guide that shows how: how to clean the parts, how to drain the oil, how to prepare a brake caliper. It had to be calm and clear, and show exactly what to do at each step.

Researched like a workshop manual

Every step was checked against service manuals, rebuild guides and coating shops’ own prep notes before anything was animated. The safety lines come from there too. Put the car on jack stands, never on the jack alone. Brake fluid strips paint, so rinse any spills. Push the pistons out with short bursts of air and a wood block in the gap, and keep your fingers out. Coolant is toxic, so recycle it. Where a step is a job for the shop, the guide says so: if the bleeder is seized, leave it to us.

Calm, slow and exact

The parts float in a clean light studio, and the part being talked about lights up. Tools glide in and do their job. A see-through housing shows where the pistons and seals sit before they come out. At the end the guide shows what the shop will plug and tape, so the customer knows why the housing and bracket are all it needs.

We tried several narrator voices on the first guide, including a playful one. The playful one went. The guides now speak in one calm voice, one short line per step, and every step lasts at least as long as its line.

One script, three ways to watch

Each guide is written once, as a list of steps with the camera, the moving parts, the highlight and the line. From that one script come the widescreen film, the upright phone cut with captions, and an interactive player where the customer steps back and forward and turns the part with a finger at any point. A change to a step changes all three.

The brake caliper guide runs 1 minute 51, the supercharger guide 1 minute 15. The player is built so it can sit inside Iron Rainbow’s customizer later, where a customer who has just picked a color would see how to get the part ready for it.