Helping The UNFAO Help Small-Scale Fishworkers
It isn’t every day that a small design firm gets to work with a client as big as the Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (UNFAO). So you can only imagine how elated we were when the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) approached us to create a series of animated films for their UNFAO Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines. These guidelines are used by small-scale fisheries and governments all over the world, helping them look out for the rights of the small-scale fishers and empower them. And with these films, we would make these guidelines that much more accessible, and dare we say, even a little… fun?
Having almost no prior experience creating animated films, we were nervous about taking on the project, at first. But because our working model often has us collaborating with outside consultants and experts on projects that aren’t squarely in the branding or graphic design domain, we decided to look for a talented illustrator and animator to join us on this project, and go from there. Our hunt led us to Basim Abu, whose illustrative style and work ethic were exactly what we were looking for. He joined our core team on this project, taking on the role of illustrator and animator, while the rest of the team focused on concept, script and storyboarding.
Creating animated films, as we soon learned, is no easy task! And creating 4 of them for organisations as discerning as the ICSF and UNFAO is a whole other ballgame.
It all starts with a written script, with a clear breakdown of each scene — elements, characters, movement and on-screen text. This is also one of the most gruelling bits on a project like this, because of how important it is to make sure we’re covering everything in the guidelines, without sacrificing any essential details.
Next up, we got into storyboarding, where we sketched out key frames from all the most significant scenes, to give us (and the client, let’s not forget!) some idea of how those scenes will eventually come out.
While this was happening, we were also keeping busy narrowing down a style for the illustrations. A purist at heart, Basim zeroed in on a charming, hand-drawn style, which was at once universal and distinctive. We shared a couple of still frames with the client, and it was love at first sight. “Go ahead!” they emailed us diplomatically, but emphatically.
The illustration style had a hand-drawn aesthetic which we all loved
The animation style would match the handmade nature of the illustrations
Storyboards and illustration styles ready, we needed to now decide what the actual animation would look like. For this, we created “animatics” for all four films, which are essentially a very rough draft of the animation, with sketched out scenes, rough voiceovers, and close-to-final timing. Here’s an early draft of one of them:
Getting to this point took a couple of months, because we had to make sure everything was set up perfectly before we began the arduous task of actual filmmaking. And away we went!
To match the hand-drawn illustration style, we decided to go with a more old-school, infinitely more time-consuming, hand-animated style for the animations as well. Sure, it would take a little longer, and be a lot more work, but it would be worth it.
After that, it was a few more months’ work, creating the animation, getting client feedback, editing, tweaking, recording final voiceovers, crafting a soundtrack, putting the final pieces together… phew!
Eventually, the client approved all four films, gave us the green light, and they’re now officially on the UNFAO channels! Check out the four films below for yourself, in full, or watch a short trailer we made, below:
FINAL FILMS
Watch the final films in all their glory below, brought to you straight from the official UNFAO YouTube Channel!