Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS is constantly evolving. New products, features, integrations, and capabilities are introduced all the time, often targeting customers who are already using the platform.

Deep Sky has partnered with AWS across a wide range of product explainers and awareness pieces, creating a steady stream of short-form animation designed to educate, engage, and encourage audiences to learn more.

Over several years, that has meant working across a huge range of products and use cases while staying within an established AWS visual system.

For Deep Sky Creative Director Barret Thomson, that consistency doesn't mean every video should look the same.

It means finding the visual idea that makes each piece worth watching.

How do you make something invisible feel tangible?

Cloud technology is inherently difficult to visualize. You can't see infrastructure moving between systems or watch data being processed. And when a product has dozens of features and use cases, the easiest solution is often to show all of them.

But that can quickly turn a short video into a checklist.

The creative challenge was to communicate enough to make the technology understandable without overwhelming the audience with information.

Barret's approach was to look beyond the feature list and ask a different question:

What could this technology look like if we could actually see it?

That shift opened the door to symbolism, metaphor, transformation, scale, and movement as ways of communicating what the technology does.

Instead of simply showing the product, the animation could give the idea a physical form.

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Start with the idea, not the icon library.

AWS has an established visual language and a vast library of reference illustrations. Those tools help create consistency, but they shouldn't determine the creative idea. For each project, the team looks for the central concept that can make the technology immediately understandable. Sometimes it's a physical metaphor. Sometimes it's a transformation. Sometimes it's the way something moves through a space. The goal isn't to invent a new visual language for every video. It's to find one visual idea that gives that product its own identity within the larger AWS ecosystem.

Make the invisible visible.

A lot of what AWS does happens behind the scenes. Systems connect. Data moves. Workflows accelerate. Different environments communicate with one another. Animation gives Deep Sky a way to make those invisible processes tangible. A connection can become two physical forms coming together. A complex system can become a flowing network. Speed can be communicated through movement rather than a statistic.

The symbolism does some of the explaining before the audience ever has to read a word.

Give the audience something to remember.

Creative Director, Barret Thomson, described the original ambition for this type of work as wanting something closer to a, “cool captivating engaging hype video.”

That distinction is important. The goal isn't to cram every feature into 60 seconds. It's to create enough curiosity that someone thinks that's cool and wants to learn more. That means knowing what to leave out.

The animation needs to communicate the core idea, create a moment of visual discovery, and give the audience a reason to keep watching.

One product. One visual idea.

A strong example came from a feature that allows Microsoft and AWS cloud environments to communicate with one another.

Rather than relying on a conventional diagram of cloud infrastructure, the team explored the idea of cloud blocks coming together and creating a flowing fabric across the space. The metaphor gave an otherwise abstract technical relationship a physical form. You could see the systems connecting.

That is the role symbolism can play in technical storytelling: it turns something you have to understand into something you can feel.

With such a broad body of AWS work spanning years, choosing a single video wouldn't tell the whole story. Instead, we'd lead with a curated sequence of the strongest visual ideas across the work. The edit would move between moments of transformation, connection, movement, scale, abstraction, and visual invention. Not every shot needs to explain what AWS product we're looking at. Together, the sequence should demonstrate the creative philosophy behind the work:

Different technologies. Different challenges. Find the visual idea that makes each one click.

This work has grown out of a close, ongoing relationship between our team and AWS.

A consistent internal advocate at AWS has played an important role in making that relationship work. Larry Schlessinger, Sr. Creative Program Manager/AWS Brand Advertising, understands the team's strengths and helps advocate for the creative approach internally, particularly when a visual concept pushes beyond a literal interpretation of the product.

That matters because AWS projects involve many different stakeholders, from product managers to campaign teams. Each brings their own priorities, and feedback can sometimes arrive late or after animation is already underway.

Barret's approach gives the team something to return to throughout that process: What is the one thing we want the audience to understand, and what is the most interesting way to show it? That question helps keep the work focused, even when the subject matter isn't.

The team isn't trying to reinvent AWS with every project. They're working within an established system while finding new ways to express what makes each product different. Over time, that approach has helped Deep Sky become a preferred vendor for AWS, not simply because the studio can produce animation at scale, but because it can continue finding fresh visual ways into increasingly complex technology.

Across the years of AWS work, the same creative principles continue to show up in different forms.

Making invisible systems tangible.

Turning infrastructure, data, connections, and workflows into physical visual experiences audiences can immediately understand.

Finding the metaphor.

Taking something abstract and giving it a form, movement, or relationship that communicates the idea without relying entirely on technical language.

Letting motion do the explaining.

Using transformation, speed, flow, and interaction to communicate how a system works rather than stopping the story to explain every step.

Creating distinction within a system.

AWS has a recognizable visual language. The challenge is finding enough creative freedom within that system to make individual products feel like their own stories.

Knowing what not to show.

The strongest technical videos aren't necessarily the ones that communicate the most information. They're the ones that communicate the right information in a way that makes people want to keep watching.

AWS has trusted Deep Sky with a growing body of work across its constantly evolving product ecosystem.

The result is not one visual style repeated across dozens of videos. It's a collection of animations connected by a shared creative philosophy: Focus on the idea, create a visual, and find a way to allow people to see where it goes.