The brief
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 and mindfulness to a wide audience.
Compassion
Client: Happify
Intro
"Where Does Compassion Really Come From?" 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.
The audio snippet for this animation is called "Where Does Compassion Really Come From?", voiced by Sharon Salzberg. It explains that compassion is a trait that can be learned. Sometimes, all it takes is truly paying attention to the people around us.
The brief was completely open, and Happify let us loose to write a visual script for the video.
The idea
To match the other animations in this Happify series, we wanted to create some more anthropomorphised animal characters. When starting to sketch, we quickly fell in love with this red setter dog to be used as the main character. She seemed interesting and inquisitive.
The shop assistant, who we are introduced to as being seemingly 'grim' came to life as a bulldog, with a naturally down-turned mouth. Turns out she wasn't grim or grumpy at all and was a very friendly and approachable creature!
The animation was created by drawing pen on paper. Each illustration was scanned, cleaned and coloured in Photoshop and composited in After Effects.
The result
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!
Credits
Director: Katy Davis
Audio: Sharon Salzberg
Design: Katy Davis
Animation: Katy Davis
Awards & goodstuff
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Nomination: The Royal Television Society, West Of England Awards 2016
