CapeRADD - Become a Citizen Scientist
This three minute animated explainer video illustrates the life cycle of some of South Africa’s benthic sharks, skate and chimaera. Our client, CapeRADD, is based in South Africa’s famous False Bay and hosts data collection experience days called ‘citizen science days’. The animation was commissioned for use during classroom sessions as an educational video resource and to gain public interest in ‘citizen science days’.
Client Testimonial
'I can highly recommend Flux 47! They were very professional, listened to the brief set out and gave great feedback and constructive advice throughout the process. The end product was beyond expectation and really helped my business demonstrate the information we wanted to our audience. I will be using them again for sure.'
- Mike Barron, Director of CapeRADD, Marine Biologist, Master Scuba Diver Trainer and scientific diver - Cape Town Area, South Africa
The Project
CapeRADD (Research And Diver Development) is a South African company which facilitates SCUBA and free-diving training courses for individuals who want to learn more about the marine environment, conservation and research. To aid classroom training they provide before taking people into the waters of False Bay, Mike from CapeRADD requested we create a three minute explainer animation which can be used to inform participants of the life-cycle of oviparous fish in the region and the importance of not disturbing any unhatched egg cases.
Script, Storyboard and Animatic
Mike provided us with a poster for reference which explained the lifecycle of egg-laying fish in the False Bay area; from this, we set about our research and developed a script for the animation which we sent to mike for approval. After some minor revisions, we had our approved script which we then sent to a local voice-over artist for recording.
We set about storyboarding our ideas and produced a series of sketches which followed the script closely. This enabled us to think in more detail about the scenes and backgrounds, specifically how we could incorporate seamless transitions from scene to scene.
After storyboarding we submitted an animatic (rough animated video with voice-over) to Mike for him to review. This is hugely beneficial for both sides, Mike was able to get the look and feel for the explainer video animation and we felt comfortable we were on the right track before we set about animating it in full.
Asset Design and Rigging
Next, we moved onto asset design and creation. We illustrated all of the assets from scratch including all fish. This was a challenge as we had to keep each of the species as identifiable as possible whilst retaining a coherent graphic style throughout.
When it came to rigging up the fish and the character we created for Mike, we used the AfterEffects plug-in Duik Bassel. This enabled us to manipulate the puppets with ease and precision.
Animation
Animating the fish was a challenge at first as we hadn’t done it before but after some research, and a few practices, we had a method that worked and could be repeated across the different rigged fish. We animated the explainer video in sections and composited them in After Effects before exporting.
Revisions and Final Video
We submitted an export to Mike for review and he was most pleased, he requested one revision which was to include more varieties of fish species in the background of the scenes to reinforce the biodiversity that South Africa’s coastline has to offer. After making this small addition we submitted the final video to Mike at Cape-RADD.
We really enjoyed working on this project. Conservation is something we feel is of huge global importance and we admire the work that CapeRADD is doing. We hope we’ll have the opportunity to work with Mike and the CapeRADD team again soon.
