This just in: Our short film, Azúcar, has been selected for screening in Barcelona and São Paulo at the Barcelona Human Rights Festival and Human Rights Festival Brazil. Congratulations to all who supported and worked so hard on this.
2022 was an interesting year for us. We began to see the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. Many clients returned after a hiatus, and the volume of projects and new opportunities started to feel like normal again. We also welcomed a new team member, Jane, who helped us fulfill our goal of building a cohesive and interdependent creative culture. Together with Jen, Songyi, and Sam, I truly feel like we’re firing on all cylinders now. And special thanks to Jody Snider for helping us develop new clients and opportunities.
I have so much gratitude for this team, and it gives me great joy to work with folks who generously support one another. We may not have all the answers all the time, but together we challenge ourselves to learn now to make better and more impactful media. And we have so much fun doing it!
I think all of that shines through in these selected projects from 2022. I am so deeply grateful to our clients, who trusted us to create these wonderful things on their behalf. We are so honored to have earned that trust.
I hope you enjoy taking a look at our work from the year that was.
Kim Hui, Holly Hillman, Rosi Amador, Brian Amador, Alisa Amador, Zia Amador, Jeff Russell, Liz Breen, Kyle Arrington, Nati Brondani, Aya Fukuda, Hannah O’Neal, Kaleb-Wolf De Melo Torres, Christoph Gelfand, Ana Hill, Ethan Barnowski, Jake Williams, Robb Moreira, Kendra Hoffman, Renee Kurilla, Joy Arcolano.
When the folks at WGBH (our local PBS station here in Boston) approached us to make animations for their Design Squad Latinx series teaching middle school students about engineering, we were excited to hop on board! We made two animations for them: What Is A Pulley? and Super Successful Showcasing, both in English and in Spanish, and in the process we learned some engineering! That’s a win win! Here is a behind-the-scenes look at our process for these bilingual productions.
For the Pulley episode we needed to truly understand how pulleys work by changing the direction of a force and how a 2-pulley system cuts the effort you pull in half (yay physics!) and then figure out a scenario that utilized a pulley in a fun and accessible way– what better than delivering burgers and drinks to friends!
For the Showcasing episode the biggest challenge was engineering the ReloCATer machine. We tried to integrate as many simple machine concepts as we could including the pulley, lever, inclined plane, etc. We took inspiration from Rube Goldberg machines, such as the Archimedean Excogitation, a 1987 audiokinetic rolling ball sculpture by George Rhoads at the Museum of Science Boston, and Wallace and Gromit’s inventions like this handy one to turn on the TV. Once we figured out how to combine simple machines to relocate a cat, the ReloCATer was born!
Since the Client provided the scripts we were able to dive right into storyboarding. A major consideration was going back and forth between “explainer space” (where we used graph paper backgrounds and simpler drawings) and “real life space” with characters and backgrounds in full color.
Here are two fun sequences:
Next it was time to decide on a look. We presented them with a few options from our past work and we ended up settling on a direction that was fairly realistic in terms of character and world design.
Next we got to work implementing the approved moodboard look in our full designs. Here are some of our favorites. Please note that we do not recommend using the ReloCATer with your guinea pig.
The final step was adding sound design, music and voiceover and these two spots were ready to inspire future engineers everywhere!
Then we began the task of translating both episodes into Spanish. We translated the script, recorded the new voiceover, re-timed the episodes and updated the on-screen text to Spanish. And voila! (Or, in Spanish, ¡Listo!)
Can’t get enough Design Squad Latinx? Head on over to PBS LearningMedia.
