What is "ECHO LDPP"?
The Educational Community Health Outreach program (ECHO) is one of 13 local dental pilot projects (LDPP) funded through the California Department of Health Care Services. All projects created under ECHO are designed to promote the oral health of children and youth ages 0-20 in Los Angeles. Learn more about ECHO at https://www.calstatela.edu/echo/about-echo
What is "The Story of Our Teeth"?
I worked remotely with the lovely Angela Cooke Jackson, PhD MPH Associate Professor at the California State University LA, Department of Communication Studies, and her amazing team of health care professionals, Dalila, Michelle, and Wendy, to create the 2D animated short, "The Story of Our Teeth".
This animation was created to inform the youth in educationally underfunded communities about the importance of good dental hygiene in a friendly and engaging manner. This project took a team of 5 dedicated women and a total of 5 months to complete from start to finish.
THE FINAL PRODUCT
"The Story of Our Teeth"
Scenes / Background Stages
THE PROCESS WORK
How were the roles divided?
Angela: Team lead / project manager, concept artist, script writer, voice actor
Jackie (Me): Illustrator, 2D-Animator
Michelle, Wendy, & Dalila: Storyboard artists, concept artist, script writer
Storyboarding and Scripting
Angela, Wendy, Dalila, and Michelle spent the first month of the project creating the script, the storyboard, and the general character concept. I joined the team for weekly status update meetings, and used this time to gather inspiration and research on the topics and ideas discussed.
Character Creation
The next two weeks were spent working on the character design keeping in mind the team's input and vision. It was important that the characters represented various age groups and ethnicities whilst still maintaining a focus on the dental aspect.
We settled on this final "mouth character" concept. The organically shaped head is made up of the skin surrounding the mouth area, and the enlarged lips and teeth help accentuate minute details like ridges, braces, silver caps, and gaps.
A few of the finalized characters
Asset creation and optimization
The next 3 weeks included building the scenes from the provided storyboards, creating the mouth assets, and preparing all of the vector illustrated files for animation in Adobe After Effects.
Animating, compositing, and rendering
Once all of the finalized character designs, scenes, and illustrated assets were approved of by the rest of the team, I spent the remainder of the project animating and rendering the individualized scenes, receiving feedback, tweaking the necessary changes, and compositing the final animation.
Thanks for checking out my work!