I knew I wanted to create a red color palette from the start, but I wasn’t quite sure which design direction to push this in. I started by creating a mood board on Pinterest to help me fine tune my idea.

I wrote down a rough script that went through a few rounds of edits. I wanted it to be clear and detailed enough, but not overwhelm with too much information. I then recorded a few takes of the rough voiceover to play around with in After Effects.

I created a few design tests and, at first, thought I might make this piece a social campaign with multiple still frames instead of a full animation. After iterating on this, I realized that this concept would be much better suited as a full animated explainer video.

Textures really spoke to me when doing research on stem cells. I was lucky to find a public domain image of actual human stem cells that I knew I wanted to incorporate into the textures of this piece. I also loved the texture of graph paper as to use as a background throughout. Because of the number of textures, I decided on a limited color palette including only shades of red and grey scale.

I got started on the design and animation in After Effects, using the temp voice over to guide the timing of the scenes. I did not create a detailed storyboard for this, but instead designed frames directly in After Effects.

After completing the design and animation, I recorded a final version of the voiceover and adjusted the timing of my keyframes as needed. Finally, I decided to call this project final and export final versions to share with the world!