Every show starts with storyboarding.
This is where our animators take the client’s vision, whether it’s a brand reveal, a holiday theme, a tribute, or a city celebration, and translate it into a visual roadmap.
During Storyboarding, we:
During storyboarding, our team explores themes, symbols, characters, and transitions, sketching visual sequences that will later evolve into drone formations. We build the narrative flow from the opening scene to the finale, ensuring the story carries emotional pacing, clarity, and impact. This stage becomes the creative blueprint that guides the entire animation process.
Concept Development & Artistic Direction
Once the storyboard is approved, our animators refine the world of the show by defining the visual style, shape silhouettes, movement behavior, and color patterns. This stage includes designing iconic shapes and symbols, determining how each element transitions into the next, establishing the show’s tone, whether playful, patriotic, cinematic, or celebratory and ensuring every formation aligns with the client’s brand, message, and environment. Our goal is always the same: create visuals that look incredible from the ground and feel like a cohesive story.
Building the Show in Firefly Studio
Next, the magic moves into our 3D animation workflow, where our team builds each scene in software like Blender and Cinema 4D before uploading it into our custom-built Firefly Studio App. This is where concepts become living sequences, as animators map each drone’s exact position, timing, and trajectory while designing smooth, organic transitions between scenes. We craft motion that feels natural, like swimming fish, waving flags, or bursting fireworks, while ensuring every frame aligns with safety requirements and flight physics. Throughout this process, we optimize drone distribution so formations remain crisp and balanced, because with hundreds of drones moving in harmony, every detail matters.
Internal Review & Refinement
Before a show ever reaches the client, it undergoes rigorous internal reviews where our animation leads evaluate the clarity and readability of formations, the smoothness of transitions, timing accuracy, color consistency, storytelling impact, and overall technical feasibility for flight. We refine every scene until the visuals meet Firefly’s artistic and technical standards.
Client Collaboration Through the 3D Viewer
One of our most powerful tools is the Firefly 3D Viewer, which allows clients to preview the entire show in real time on the actual map of their venue. They can view every formation from multiple angles, listen to the synchronized soundtrack, understand how the show fits into their event space, and request adjustments before final approval. This process ensures the final product matches the client’s vision perfectly.
Final Export & Hand Off to the Show Crew
Once approved, the animation is converted into flight-ready data for the Firefly Gen2 drones. Every movement, down to the centimeter, is encoded into instructions the Pilot App uses during showtime. The animation team hands off a polished, tested, and performance ready show to Firefly’s pilots and technicians.
