Carla the Hedgehog

Motion design

The mission

Creative Conscience: The Natural World:

In collaboration with Dorset Wildlife Trust, create a 60 second long animation aimed at 6-8-year-olds. This animation should highlight the importance of a local animal to the ecosystem and the steps that can be taken to help it.

Team: Keytrin Gyumova, Nayanika Sengupta, Emily Kinson, Ben Totten.

Our solution

Our animation focused on the hedgehog. The sequence explains why hedgehogs are vital for the ecosystem and how the viewers can help hedgehogs survive. The hedgehog is a well-loved animal but doesn’t always get a lot of coverage. The result is intended to be shown in schools and natural reserves.

See the full animation above!

Insights

Since 2000, the rural hedgehog population across Britain has declined by between:

30%-75%

(Harris, 2022)

Storyboards

Each member of our group had an initial concept for the storyboard. We discussed our favourite elements from each and combined them to create a storyline. Our ideas bounced off each other and it allowed us to merge concepts to create strong visuals to convey our message. However, it was challenging to weave everyone’s ideas together. We found that mixing some ideas and forming new ones was a good way to solve this.

The finalised storyboard contained fourteen frames. Each member of our group would take on three or four frames each, to evenly divide the project. I decided to create the first four opening slides of Carl.

Script

Target audience research helped us with the tone of voice. Keeping the script within the 60 second timeline was trickier than expected, thought we solved this by editing the storyboard to allow more information to be conveyed.

Style

Style experimentation was vast and an enjoyable part of this project. Settling for a style which appeals to the age range and was technically achievable required lots of iteration. The hand-drawn effect, pioneered by our teammate Nayanika, stood out as engaging and achievable.

Style effect

By drawing five versions of the same asset, we were able to combine them into a hand drawn effect. However, when within After Effects we found a function for this style was built in. Following on, we made sure to further investigate what After Effects could do.

Sound

When gathering sounds from our local environment, it roved challenging to get crips sounds. But using Premier Pro, we were able to refine them. Royalty free sound effects were another avenue. Downloading and implementing relevant sounds was effective. However, timing them with the animation took time and detail.

Development

A challenging part of this project was trying to mirror my section, so it worked with the others. Making the animation look like it was created by one, not four people was tricky. However, all my versions were useful developments and gained me more experience working within motion

Summary

This project allowed me to gain useful craft skills within After Effects and new methods of working with a team. Our concept and storyline of Carla the hedgehog undertook positive development and when refined, answered Creative Conscience’s ‘natural world’ brief effectively.Our team communicated and worked well together. We all contributed equally to the animation and supported our fellow members. By merging our ideas, we came to results everyone was satisfied with and produced a coherent sequence, which was appropriate for the context and target audience we had selected. Individually, I found working in After Effects useful and enjoyable. I managed to adapt to the new software well and discovered a variety of ways to make creating the animation swifter, while still gaining our desired result. Maintaining storyboards and scripts was challenging. These requested many iterations to them. This was time consuming, but their use in planning for creating the actual sequence was worth it. Overall, this unit did well in introducing me to software and jargon within motion, I feel more confident working with animation and intend to further develop these skills.

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