Highlights x Google: Be Internet Awesome
Client: Zaner-Bloser
Agency: Hatcher Group
Project Management: Zoey Lichtenheld & Melissa Mellor
Design: Daniela Aguero & Katelynne Vizcayno
3D Character Design: Steph Ramplin
Sound Design: Shaun Rosa
Background
Hatcher Group helped develop a series of training materials for the “Be Internet Awesome” initiative created by Highlights in partnership with Google. The purpose of this initiative was to teach children (and adults) internet safety in language they could understand with a hands-on toolkit. The client then wanted to translate the 5 Pillars of the kit into small, digestible video lessons to give children a practical example of the tools and reinforce the lessons learned in that Pillar. In addition, they needed a way to advertise the contents of the kit to families and educators.
Production
Our first hurdle was marrying the established 3D mascots that had already been created for Highlights with the simpler, flat animation of the Pillar examples. We played around with different ideas of what to do with the “Superhero Girl,” from having her be an off-screen narrator to have her periodically pop into frame outside of the space of the 2D characters. Ultimately, the team decided that it made the most sense to have the Superhero Girl bookend each Pillar by introducing the scenario and then providing some final thoughts.
My first attempts at defining Superhero Girl’s animation style, trying to mimic a rough claymation.
The next challenge was determining how the Superhero Girl should animate. Knowing my own limitations with 3D animation, we discussed having her static and doing hard cut pose-to-pose transitions to give her some life while not overreaching my skill set.
The client agreed to land somewhere in the middle between the static poses and full Pixar-style animation, which gave me an excuse to learn more 3D animation. I was really fortunate to receive a fully rigged character from the original 3D illustrator. The original image that was created for Highlights Magazine featured some imperfections and thumbprint textures that showed Superhero Girl as a clay figure rather than a clean 3D render. I decided to try to replicate this by using similar textures and roughening up the animation to create a faux-claymation feel to it. This was meant to serve a two-fold purpose - to emulate the style of the magazine cover and to mask my 3D animation limitations.
The client decided against this approach, and we went with a cleaner approach to her look and feel while maintaining a lower framerate on her animation to still give a hint of claymation.
My preliminary rig for Superhero Girl’s mouth looked more like a ventriloquism dummy, with only an open and closed state. I went back to the drawing board there to make her mouth movements more dynamic and more convincing with lip-syncing.
With these challenges overcome, I could dive into the full animation. Once I built out the animatic for the kit intro, I noticed that there were some timing issues where we would be hanging on a few frames too long. I came up with a solution where Google’s Internauts would personify each of the adult roles called out in the voiceover, rather than sitting on the frame for another 15-20 seconds.
Google’s Internauts representing a teacher, librarian, camp counselor, and community organizer.