Clip from Unit 2 Lesson 1: Mountain
Client: Pure Edge
Agency: Circus Picnic
"Movement Stories" and "Flourish" Series
Year: 2024
Pure Edge came back to me through Circus Picnic to revisit the characters we worked with on the Pre-K Brain Breaks series.
This time the videos were going to get a lot more ambitious.
The Challenge:
We were no longer working with single poses or simple movement sequences, but were instead going to animate entire yoga flows (keeping them around 6 minutes in length). To keep things relatively simple, we were going to only work with the Frog character, who had a larger library of videos from the Brain Breaks than the Dragon, so we had more existing pieces and sequences to pull from. On top of the extended length and the more complex sequences, we were going to incorporate backgrounds into these videos (which I illustrated), but move away from the instructional narration and instead use sound and musical cues to guide the children. I created little pop ups for the animals when their noises were used as sound cues. A cat and a cow, meowing and mooing for Cat-Cow, the cobra who hisses during Cobra and more.
We used the same sequence for the Intro and Outro sequences, swapping out backgrounds, to keep things economical
Outro sequence, tilting back up into the clouds
We created a total of 8 videos for the Movement Stories, and then another 7 videos in the Flourish* series.
*More abbreviated videos where the bulk of the sequences were pulled from material created for the Movement Stories. They were dedicated flows like Sun Salutations that featured throughout the Movement Stories.
The Flourish videos had the same gentle gradient background, and were shorter in duration. These videos featured specific sequences used throughout the Movement Stories.
The Flourish videos featured sequences that were used in the Movement Stories videos. This Closing Sequence was how some videos ended.
Working without audio started as a challenge. We started with some scratch tracks to stand in as a guide for timing. After the first video, we got the hang of it and realized that we didn't need the scratch tracks, that if we used them moving forward they would just slow us down. Using the inhales and exhales was enough of a guide for timing. We used the existing breaths from the Brain Breaks as the standard and then I made an extra set of abbreviated breaths for quicker movements. We wanted to speed up the overall animation to accommodate more movements and to take into account that we were working with a slightly older audience for this series.
Clip from Unit 2 Lesson 5: Safari
We worked from a master document with a breakdown of all the movements in each sequence. For the proof of concept we worked with 2 videos to start: the most complex in terms of movement (and the one that would require the most from scratch material) and then an easy one (where we had a lot of existing material to pull from.
Erin, one of the team members responsible for designing the curriculum, worked out the sequence specifics, included notes on how the moves should flow and even recorded reference video of her and her young children moving through the sequences. This part was really invaluable because you could see where a child's attention span would start to fall off.
The videos that required a group or pair of frogs had their movements slightly staggered so that they wouldn't look perfectly in sync. Feeling accessible for children was super important for the curriculum and the videos.
The Solution:
This project ultimately came down to balance. If the client wanted something that was complex, we had to balance the scales by finding an efficiency somewhere else. This give and take created a kind of equilibrium in order to tackle something so big in scale and complexity. For example, this time we were animating transition movements– moving from standing to sitting or kneeling down. But to keep things less complex with our 2D replacement system, we cross faded between front view and side view. That was the trade off we were able to work out with the client.
Animated transitions
Cross fade between profile and front view
About three quarters of the way through the series, we brought on a junior animator to assist me. She was brilliant. She took to the replacement system quickly and she matched the style we had developed with ease. Working in Animate with shared files can really turn into a disaster if frequently used symbols get adjusted and we never had a single issue. She really made my life a lot easier and thanks to her assistance we cruised through to completion. I didn't want to micromanage her, and so I had more of a hands off approach. My feedback was limited to things like, slow this movement down by about 10 frames, or add another breath in here. She just got it and we really fell into sync quickly.
Clip from Unit 2 Lesson 1: Mountain
Conclusion:
These videos were a wild success both in classroom environments and in use in children's hospitals across the United States. Because we opted against using voice over, we didn't have to worry about translating the videos into different languages and so they have crossed borders and are in use in several countries. There is a universal quality to them with the music cues and the animal sounds that help to guide through the movements and thus transcend language. They encourage young children to move their bodies, to use breath as a calming method, and to feel good moving in their bodies. There isn't an emphasis on having perfect form, or being hyper disciplined. It's more about finding joy and satisfaction in intentional movement.
This series also jump started my own personal yoga practice, which is its own success metric.
Flourish: Twist Sequence. I closed with this particular video because of the fun at the end.