Responsive Group Tutorial

Brief: The National Autistic Society brief asked for 1-8 videos with a combined length of 2 minutes. The videos should be about Autism (specifically adults with autism and the struggles of trying to find work as an autistic person). They want this to follow on from, but not imitate, their Too Much Information video for their Autism Uncut campaign.

Intention: We wanted to answer the brief by creating an animated documentary series. Our aim is to humanise autism and tell the stories of the everyday people it affects.
We decided to produce one film each, but make them to work together as a series/collective campaign. They will each be produced by a different artist and have their own visual language, but will be cohesive and standardised in their colour scheme and fonts (following the brand guidelines).

What we've done so far: We have conducted interviews and recorded audio. We've each chosen an interview to work with and cut them down to around 30 seconds (combined length 90 seconds, so we have some breathing room to expand if necessary).

We have a group Pinterest board that we have been pinning to, creating a mood board of illustrators and animation that we are feel is relevant in content/visually appealing).

We have all started to develop characters and drawings that will be used in our animations.

Jay F has done a lot of work, much more than Molly and I have done. However, he's been neglecting his other modules so needs to make sure to balance his workload. I do feel like I need to catch up and that by not having as much work as Jay F, that I am letting the team down. We don't have long left at all (13 days) so it really is time to get moving (literally, animating!) 

I have started to colour my character sketches but I am aware that my animation might be too simple. Will it be engaging enough?

Questions: Is is appropriate? I usually work for a much younger audience, typically children, so I am concerned that my illustrations might not be appropriate for an adult audience. Will they find it patronising? The other groups told us that it's fine, it's endearing and charming, not too child focussed but still child friendly. Reminds them of Nick Sharratt.

Do they work together? Yes! They work together as a series really well. Some groups said that it looked like they'd all been created by the same person, but Steve said that it looks like three different artists but deliberately catered to the individual stories we are telling.

Feedback: Use Edge Animate to voice the frames. It's a really easy way to lip sync 2D illustration, especially for beginners. Lots of tutorials out there (animation is getting easy for non-animators to do).

Hashtag - Iamnotmyautism is too long! AutismUncut is better and already used by the National Autistic Society, so we should use that one.

The other groups: Kat, Neneh and Guy are working well together. Each have their own roles, working to strengths.

Ash, Bash and Mary had some communication issues and it's very tense in their group at the moment. They'd chosen the Roald Dahl brief, which is more of a personal illustration project and they're struggling to make it a combined effort. I suggested that rather than Bash and Mary doing the inital sketches and Ash 'cleaning them up'/redrawing them, that they each work on different areas or layers of the illustration e.g. someone does backgrounds, someone else does character design and another does costume/objects.