Vertex Animation Series
Reimagining Patient Stories
Using animation to redefine the way patient stories are told.
To pull out human emotion, patient stories are often live-action films. While we often turn to our cameras for capturing patient stories, COVID limited access to patients. This problem allowed us to propose a new solution — capturing patient interviews virtually and bringing the story to life with an animated series profiling the impact of science through the lens of patients.
Pharma
Storyboarding
Animation
Vertex
The Concept
Any organization in the health & pharma space talks about their impact with patients (if they don't they probably should be in another industry). We've seen firsthand how seriously the Vertex team takes this commitment to patients. We're using the power of video to reach beyond the standard employee testimonial content in order to develop more empathy for how patients feel.
Our approach
Adding to the unscripted storytelling approach, we turned to a somewhat broken and organic style to feel human and hand-made rather than sleek and clean-cut. The client started by identifying the patient stories they wanted to capture. From there, we developed an interview guideline and captured interviews with patients on a Zoom call while gathering audio with their phones. Each scene was fully drawn, stylized, and colored by our team before an animator brought everything to life.
Avoiding Gimics
When it comes to animation, we really wanted to avoid fast transitions and tricks that distracted from the story, and instead chose to focus on some of the more subtle nuances that helped things feel more human. Character performance, facial expressions, breathing, hesitation, etc. Getting all of the small details right mattered. We wanted to pull in some of the same principles we'd use if we were filming the story, but find clever ways to amplify the story.
