Every explainer animation we create is a collaboration between us and our clients. Guided by each client’s essence, goals and message, we create scripted and visual storytelling that is informative, engaging, memorable and relatable.

Bringing this approach to our project with We Free Women, we are delighted with what we created togther and even more delighted to see the animated explainer video out on social media raising awareness about the work of We Free Women. In this blog, our creative team reflected on the experience of creating the animation.

Sarah Verrall - Senior Creative

Right from the creative meeting there was a great energy about this project, the WFW team’s passion had shone through during our call and we were all really excited to get going on their film. Alex produced a beautiful script that captured the key messages and essence of WFW that was a joy to design the visuals too.

With all our films, we face many creative challenges and WFW was no exception. We needed to acknowledge the ‘hidden load’ placed on women, the mix of emotions these place on them but also ensure that we kept a sense of empowerment throughout. We needed the film to be positive, but not stick a “keep smiling” plaster over things when reality is about living with life’s up and downs. WFW don’t claim to rid all of lifes challenges, but instead provide individuals tools to hopefully help make life a little easier. Visualising the difficulties needed approaching sensitively without caricaturing. Fran did an amazing job of ensuring our four main characters were posed carefully, illustrating them with the feeling of weight on their shoulders, a lowered head and slight tired expression to the face, avoiding any clichés. I knew I wanted to nod to Greek Goddesses in film as shown in the opening scene, but also didn’t want to trivialise the situation and make it feel inaccessible. One of the major challenges we had to overcome with this project is that for a lot of women they don’t consider themselves deserving of self-care believing “someone else is worse off than they are” when they clearly need a break or looking after. We needed to see real people in this film to break down that barrier and ensure so self-care includes everyone as part of Tamsin’s mission with establishing WFW.

We utilised a lot of the reference images and testimonials provided by WFW from their first retreat to ensure our film was grounded in reality. Nature plays a massive part throughout the visuals and Sam did an incredible job to bring this connection to nature across the film with her research into British wildflowers. There are so many beautiful details Sam observed and captured in the illustrations, the blankets, the warm glow of the fires and candles, she really captured the warmth, care and attention to detail that WFW create when they look after their retreat guests.

The animation itself had some challenges as we’ve brought a painterly style to WAC traditional whiteboard style. What I enjoy at WAC is collaborating with our creative team to brief them in and see what creative solutions they come up with. Our stories are created by a team, not just one voice, ensuring they are rich and balanced. Jackie has a keen eye for detail and I knew she would come up with something special for the animation. The emotion plays out from the characters, the gentility to the movements and ink drop reveals, the small details of even the tent opening up to invite you in, it all works together to give you this empowering uplifting film and make you feel included in WFW movement.

We had a talented team of women on this project who provided incredible scripting, illustrations, animation and project management to take this film beyond what I had imagined. It’s been a real joy to collaborate with We Free Women and play a part in helping spread their important message.

Alex Gilmore - Scriptwriter

"Coming away from the all-female Creative Meeting, we knew this would be a special project, and really wanted to get it right. As with any script, there were talking points we knew we needed to hit—things like what We Free Women does and who it’s for—but above all of that, we wanted to capture the We Free Women energy. In retreat guest’s own words, the We Free Women experience is: “life-changing”, “eye-opening”, “joyful”, “magical”, and “transformational”. The We Free Women team’s energy was tangible, inspiring and infectious from the start.

Tamsin shared the backstory behind the movement: Her journey of going on wellness retreats, reflecting on how self-care isn’t accessible to so many women, and then making it her mission to change that. We spent time thinking about some of the nuances, and what we did and didn’t want the messaging to be. For example, We Free Women is positive, but it isn’t manically upbeat or expecting everyone to be happy; Retreat guests are free to come exactly as they are. We Free Women is also not money driven.

Though we do hope the film might garner support and inspire donations, we focused more on communicating the ethos. By telling a story that resonates with people, we hope they’ll buy-in to the movement and think, “How can I be part of this?” This project was a real labour of love. Thank you to We Free Women for letting us be part of the movement in our small way, and for reminding us ladies that “self-care is not selfish!"

Sam Holmes - Illustrator

I was super excited to find myself on this project! When I joined, Fran had already created some incredible character illustrations to set the style of the project. I had the challenge of creating backgrounds and props that could match up with her beautiful style. I was given some time to experiment and settled on trying to emulate a delicate and soft watercolour-esque style, which was super fun to try and replicate digitally.

I loved looking through the images from the previous retreat for inspiration, it looked so amazing! I drew inspiration from the lovely cosy vibe in the images, as well as things that I personally love and find relaxing to try to create scenes that gave off a warm and snug feeling - the kind of places you’d really like to relax and wind down at the end of your day. I feel very fortunate for being able to have contributed to creating awareness for such a lovely charity.

Jackie Miller - Animator

Projects like We Free Women are always a great opportunity to take a chance on those technical ideas you’ve had but not necessarily the time or incentive to pursue. I’m playing off of whatever images I’m presented with, and We Free Women is a fantastic example of the gorgeous illustrations our Illustrators can produce while still fitting into the Cognitive ‘whiteboard’ format.

That said, you have to find the balance between keeping that hand drawn aesthetic whilst also having an asset that is manageable to work with in a digital environment. Hopefully my alterations have still allowed these fabulous drawings to shine!

When I familiarise myself with the content, I will be thinking ahead to the technical aspects. What is the illustration telling me? What do I want to achieve from that drawing? What can I achieve from these assets? How much time can I dedicate to each idea?

Something as seemingly simple as the tent opening required time, testing, and tweaking, to make something that felt natural and looked like it belonged. The hardest effect was creating the ‘EXHAUSTION FOG’. I needed it to flow around the characters seamlessly and emphasise that melancholy without detracting from the rest of the scene. Both of these effects required rebuilding the illustrations in their most basic shapes in order to animate them effectively, then overlaying other digital techniques to return them to a more painterly style.

There’s always the risk you will dedicate hours to a new idea, and it’ll either add that extra “zhuzh” or fall flat. Fortunately, my experiments in this project all seem to have paid off!

Once I have the technical set up I desire, I have room to focus on the emotive exploration of a film. I wanted to make sure these characters were able to move with subtle but relatable movements, so a lot of my time I dedicated to our initial four ‘muses’ (as I came to think of them.) A lot of heavy lifting had already been achieved with the static illustrations, so it really comes down to knowing what’s needed, what pushes those postures and expressions to make that message clear and engaging.

Whenever I come on-board to a new project it can take time to comprehend the message of a film, whether because it’s an academic concept beyond my studies or a social commentary I have minimal-to-no experience with.

Understanding the motivations of We Free Woman was perhaps the easiest way to build a rapport; these were emotions and revelations that any person that identifies as a woman can relate to. If not impacted personally, its guaranteed we’ve all witnessed loved ones go through similar struggles.

We loved working with We Free Women! If you have a project you’d like to raise awareness about and share as a explainer animation, we’d love to talk you. You can book a free 30 minute chat, fill in our contact form or send us an email.