Client: Enactus Fleming College
Writers: Enactus Fleming
Art Director: Vanessa Matthieu (vanessathedesigner.ca)
Voiceovers: Enactus Fleming (as credited)
2022
I created this video within a very tight deadline for Fleming College's official entry in the 2022 Canadian National competition for Enactus. Enactus is an international student organization dedicated to creating entrepreneurial social enterprises that serve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations. This video details the progress of multiple projects that Enactus Fleming runs. I was solely responsible for production, creating all storyboards, animation, sound design and final deliverables.
Process:
The process of this video was very accelerated since there was a tight deadline and only about two weeks between the time the script was finalized and the date the video had to be submitted for Enactus Canada's National competition in 2022.
Enactus is a worldwide student organization of entrepreneurs that competes to create social initiatives that are sustainable businesses as well as address an issue in the community. The organization judges social impact based on the UN's 17 Goals for Sustainable Development. This video was Sir Sanford Fleming College's official entry in the 2022 national competition in Canada. It focuses on 4 projects and their progress and selling points over the year. It was important to distinguish each project with it's own visual style in the video as well as have a design though-line for the entire video.
Working with Vanessa Matthieu as well as the project leaders at Enactus Fleming, I submitted a design proposal for a twist on the standard whiteboard video format that took the viewer through a virtual classroom with fully animated breakdowns of each project on different boards.
The initial storyboard (pictured to the right) included 5 projects and focused mainly on a corkboard style with the exception of 'Paper Planet' on yellowed, crinkled paper and Project United on blackboard.
After some design iterations and tests the yellowed paper for 'Paper Planet' was switched to brown paper to better display the ethos of the project which uses paper waste to create educational planter pod toolkits to teach sustainability to elementary schools. 'Project United' paralleled this unique style for a project by using the same line animation strategy but in white, chalky lines over a blackboard background.
While the script went through a few revisions after the storyboard was created, the focus for a few projects was reduced in time and others were expanded. The final version separated to a focus on 3 major projects for about 2 1/2 minutes each and shorter sections for 2 other projects at about 1 minute each. To unify the 3 major projects I decided to add a new whiteboard style for Keys to Me so it would be it's own distinct section like Paper Planet & Project United. The final 2 shorter project sections were both presented in the corkboard style to tie the end of the video in with the beginning and unify the video design as a whole.
My art director on this project, Vanessa Matthieu, created a visual style for the corkboard design for me to animate and also a series of doodles that appear throughout the video as easter eggs for the Enactus Fleming team. She also did a doodle version of the Enactus logo to open our presentation that I animated to mimic a hand drawn animation style.
Certain areas of this video required a visual representation of the concepts being discussed. These animations were strategically placed in places where I felt the video needed more visual strength, and also moderated based on the time available to complete this project. Many ideas had to be scrapped or scaled down from the initial storyboard because I needed to make sure I wasn't wasting any time on animations that would only be seen for a split second in the final version.
At approximately 2:20 is an example of one of these animations, displaying the idea of "interchangeability". Modules in the automatic press for creating the paper planters could be taken out and replaced for future improvements. To display this I created the simple animation of four molds switching places. It seems like a simple concept but is actually quite complicated in execution. I chose to mask each mold vector so they did not overlap when moving in front or behind each other. This mask animation is detailed below. Note that the masks are not exactly flush with the edges of molds as they move, this was a detail that I chose not to fine tune as this animation lasts less than 1.5 seconds and the edges are imperceptible in the final video.
