"How to Defeat Negative Thinking" is one of five in a series of animations we created for Happify, a company that creates science-based activities and games that help people to lead a more fulfilling life.
Happify got in touch as they wanted a series of animations to bring awareness to their company. They wanted the videos to be fun and engaging, and to help spread a positive message about meditation, mindfulness, and positive thinking to a wide audience.
The audio snippet for this animation is called "How to Defeat Negative Thinking", voiced by positive psychology coach Derrick Carpenter. Negative thinking can get the best of us at the worst of times - but there's hope! Derrick Carpenter reveals two key tactics that will intercept and defeat these thoughts before they have a chance to infiltrate your life.
The brief was completely open, and Happify let us loose to write a visual script for the video.
This is our fifth video for Happify. To keep with the theme of the other animations in this series, we wanted our characters to be anthropomorphised animals. We think that animals can be extremely accessible characters – everyone can relate to them; male, female, children, adults, every race/cultural background... this one features a little otter (Otto!).
The animation was created by drawing pen on paper. Each illustration was scanned, cleaned and coloured in Photoshop and composited in After Effects.
The client was thrilled, especially with all of the little touches we put in: the sound effects and little details which make it more likely people might watch the video/s twice.
The series of videos have been widely shared and blogged about by a huge audience around the world. Approximately six months since the release of the first video, the series gathered over half a million views on YouTube and 300 thousand views on Vimeo.
We’re thrilled to recently find out that we are nominated for Best Animation Series at the Royal Television Society West Of England Awards 2016, up against production company giants Aardman and Arthur Cox. This is a huge honour for us, and Happify were over the moon too!
Director: Katy Davis
Audio: Derrick Carpenter
Design: Katy Davis
Animation: Katy Davis and Kim Alexander
Nomination: The Royal Television Society, West Of England Awards 2016
