Stage 1: Understanding the Constraint Telegram's onboarding GIFs have a strict 1MB size limit, which severely restricted animation length and complexity. Stakeholders wanted a single, content-heavy video to explain features in detail, but delivering this inside the bot was technically impossible. The brief needed to be reconsidered from the ground up.

Stage 2: Strategic Content Split Instead of forcing all content into one compressed piece, I proposed two versions with distinct purposes: a lean micro-onboarding animation for inside the bot and a longer promotional animation for broader use. This reframing allowed each piece to serve its audience without compromise, keeping the in-bot experience instant while enabling richer storytelling elsewhere.

Stage 3: Motion Design Adaptations For the onboarding piece, I replaced heavy gradients with motion cues, refined pacing to reduce file size, and optimized shapes for clean compression. The promotional piece retained richer visuals since it was not subject to the same technical constraints. Every design decision was guided by the technical reality of each delivery format.

Stage 4: Technical Breakthrough Midway through production, Telegram changed its media processing pipeline, removing MP4-to-GIF auto-conversion and breaking the existing upload process. I reverse-engineered a new optimization and compression method to ensure seamless deployment, then documented this workflow internally to prevent future disruption and enable smoother production cycles.