A friend of mine referred me to a group of doctors (Mend Health) to help them present their project on a site called Medstartr, which is like Kickstarter but specifically for medical projects. Along with only a handful of others, they were selected from a number of projects to get their idea on the site, and needed some help getting their presentation together.

The catch? They found out they needed a video for their post only a week before it was due.

They got in touch with me on a Tuesday afternoon, and by Wednesday I began working. The deadline was midnight on Sunday, and we had a pretty ambitious script to create. After working four 12-14 hour days in a row, I delivered a semi-final draft on Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon we made the necessary fixes and changes, and got things wrapped up. We had to pare things back only a little, and I am really happy with how everything turned out, as was the team.

I’ve posted the video above, along with stills below. I created this video with a combination of Adobe’s tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Flash, and Audition) with lots of help from Blender. All the characters and artwork was designed specifically for this project, and I sourced the sound effects and production music from SoundDogs.com, a site I like to use for this sort of thing. The only other part I didn’t create was the voiceover, which was sourced by my contact with Mend Health.

I’m really happy with how well Blender worked for me with this project, and it has really sparked my interest in continuing to learn to animate with it. I was able to create both character models, rig them, add shape keys for facial movements, and animate them in a matter of only two days. Amazing.

I drew a little bit of inspiration from David O’Reilly for the look of the scenes/characters, too. I admire his work.

Anyway, that’s a wrap. On to the next project, and time to learn even more!