Motion Graphics
June 2021
Why did you get the COVID-19 vaccination? What was the experience like? What are you looking forward to doing after the pandemic? These were the questions that the ABC Science Collaborative posed to a group of North Carolina teenagers that wanted to encourage other young people to get vaccinated.
Formed at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ABC Science Collaborative is an initiative designed to implement a safe return to school for children throughout North Carolina. Based out of Duke University and the UNC School of Medicine, the initiative brings scientists and educators together to address the needs of teachers, students, and parents.
As part of a social media campaign that encourages teenagers to get vaccinated, the collaborative asked young people to record videos describing their experiences with the vaccine. The collaborative then asked us to create animations that would add life and color to the videos.
We used the After Effects plugin Thicc Stroke for scenes throughout the project, such as when Caleb discusses having a headache.
Thicc Stroke was also used in conjunction with mask reveals.
We created illustrations that correspond with the activities teens said they were looking forward to doing after the pandemic.
I worked on this project with a team of two other designers. We began by defining a bright, youthful animation style that emphasized simple illustrations and liquid movements. After we received raw footage that teenagers recorded on their phones, we color corrected the videos in Adobe Premiere Pro and began creating assets in Adobe Illustrator that corresponded with each teen’s narration. We imported the videos and assets to Adobe After Effects, where we used a combination of reveals, masking, and the Thicc Stroke plugin to create our animations.
Because of the time-sensitive nature of this project, our timeline was tight—we had less than a week to edit and animate all four videos. But the collaborative was excited with the finished product, writing to our team “Thanks for a job well done! We are so pleased with these videos. THANK YOU!” Three of the videos are in English, while one is in Spanish.
