This was a fun project – I do very much enjoy just getting to create whole animated worlds and dive into a bit of character animation to get it feeling as alive as possible. I think that layering in details that reward rewatching a video is something I tend to do across everything I create, and this anti-vaping animation for Nottinghamshire council was no different – there are loads of discreet references to various things sprinkled throughout.

Because the primary audience of this video was young people aged 11-22, I was keen to avoid creating something that tried to be ‘too cool’ – instead opting for a fairly modern visual approach that is guided by an environment’s light and the movement of the elements within it. 

The keen eyed viewer will notice the uncanny resemblance between the vape and 2001 Space Odyssey’s HAL9000 character – I thought making this connection would be a great way to quickly establish the malevolent nature of the vape; giving its addictive properties a really nefarious tone. 

This was another fairly quick turnaround project, and a few scenes – the timeline sequence in particular – could have done with more development; but in this case the people at Nottinghamshire Council were very keen to get all of the timeline information up on screen, even if we’re not really able to read it. But apart from that scene, I’m really quite happy with it; I think it’s an engaging, somewhat funny, and fairly informative piece. It was received very well by the council, and they’ve since distributed it across several platforms.