Fig 1. Rough Storyboard Drawing.
Rough Ideas
I began creating the animation with all of my research taken into consideration, and also the responses from my first questionnaire. Like previous animations I had designed, it started off with lots of rough drawings, and lots of rough storyboarding taken from mine and Jose's script.
Creating all of the Scenes, with script notes.
Scene 1 – Scales
Scene one depicts an ordinary individual, displayed with food tattoos, in reference to not only individuality, but also calorie intake is seen stepping onto a set of scales. The dial on the scales moves to 60% percent, which is in refence to the 60% of the UK struggling with their weight.
[VOICEOVER] “With 60% of the population in the UK being overweight or obese, and a strong association between obesity, metabolic diseases, poor quality of life -and now worse response to COVID-19 infection-, losing weight is a target of many”.
Scene 2 - Batteries
Note- I started to encounter some issues with how I might depict some of the scenerios Jose had written in the script. Scene 2 is described "[text appears with voice-over] What does an obese person, a high-performance athlete and a person with anorexia nervosa have in common? -Shows one of each of these individuals in ‘underwear’ when each of are mentioned- appearing in order and looking at each other, confused as if they had nothing to do with each other". I struggled to depict this scene the way Jose had described, because I found that each time I tried to draw the characters (anorexic, obese and athletic) it could look pretty offensive. The design also ran the risk of not being diverse enough, and I found myself over thinking the appearance of each of these characters.
The animation characters are introduced to the stage as electrical batteries, the different sizes depict the three comparisons, anorexia, obesity and athlete.
[VOICEOVER] “What does an obese person, A person with anorexia nervosa and an athlete all have in common?”
Fig 2. Scene 2, Character Development (2020)
Scene 3 – Endocrinology and Physiology
A bubble appears and the word Endocrinology appears followed by endocrine organs including the pancreas, testes and organs, followed by the words Physiology, and physiological cells and an atom appear on the stage.
[VOICEOVER] “To find an answer to these questions and to find solutions to this problem we need to look under the hood, with endocrinology -the science of hormones- and physiology -the science of how our bodies work”.
Scene 4 – Physiological Function
The title ‘Physiological Function’ appears on the stage, followed by functioning bodily organs.
[VOICEOVER] “So, what do they have in common? They may all suffer from consequences putting insufficient energy in their bodies relative to the energy they need to maintain their normal physiological function”
Scene 5 - Obese
Obese battery is seen jogging to lose weight, however, becomes out of breath to indicate he is lacking energy.
[VOICEOVER] “The obese/overweight, typically they eat more than they need to maintain weight, but he/she may be trying to lose weight and eat less and exercise more”
Scene 6- Anorexic
Anorexic battery is seen with a diagram of a stomach rumbling in discomfort, to indicate hunger and metabolic distress.
[VOICEOVER] The anorectic, doesn’t eat enough, regardless of the situation...
Scene 7 – Athlete
Three athlete batteries appear on stage, standing on Olympic stands. All three of the batteries are seen snoring, one battery proceeds to fall off the Olympic stand as he has burnt all of his energy availability.
[VOICEOVER] The athlete, due to high energy expenditure, not enough energy in, despite eating high amounts of food.
Scene 8 - Power Circuit (Low Energy Availability)
Scene cuts to a power circuit, within the power circuit a battery reads “Energy Deficit”, the camera follows thee power circuit wires down to a light bulb that reads “Low Energy Availability”.
[VOICEOVER] To understand what happens in their bodies we need to look into the effects of Energy Deficit, or what we also call Low Energy Availability.
Scene 9 - So, what is Energy Availability?
An inside visual of a mouth is seen eating, followed by food sliding down the oesophagus, into the stomach acid. The food displayed depicts a variety of food groups, including two pieces of candy/sweets that read “energy”,
[VOICEOVER] So, what is Energy Availability? Energy availability is the amount of ingested dietary energy to maintain normal physiological function after subtracting energy from exercise.
Scene 10 – Burn Machine
Scene cuts to the obese battery running on a treadmill, this is then connected to a tank of food that we shall call the burn machine, this depicts how exercise burns our dietary energy.
[VOICEOVER] “Normally, this amount of energy allows our body to keep functioning normally”
Scene 11 – Survival Mode
An anorexic battery appears with facial hair and is stranded on a desert island to depict survival mode. The battery is seen fishing and pulls out a fish reading “Metabolic Adaptation”.
[VOICEOVER] “Our body senses that we potentially may be in a situation where little energy could put at risk our survival, and a deeply engrained evolutionary response will make sure that our organism can survive”
Scene 12 – Battery Diagram
Battery is seen standing with arms and legs spread. A skeletal figure appears over the top to reveal his anatomy. Zooms in on fat cells, which is seen secreting Leptin, leptin exits stage...
[VOICEOVER] “Take for example the hormone leptin. Leptin is a hormone secreted by fat cells…”
Scene 13- Hypothalamus and Pituitary Gland
Zooms onto the brain, which displays the Hypothalamus, and Pituitary gland, A phone dial appears to indicate a message being sent…
[VOICEOVER] “and it is an important regulator of energy homeostasis. when energy availability is reduced, circulating leptin is reduced and this an important signal to our brain in the hypothalamus, a key centre for behaviour and endocrine control.”
Scene 14 – Thyroid Gland
Seen then follows down to the Thyroid Gland, which secretes the T4 (thyroxine) and T3 (triiodothyronine) these are the chemicals that help balance but also un-balance metabolic rate.
[VOICEOVER] “This way, for example, the pituitary gland signals the thyroid gland and there is a reduction in the hormones of the thyroid gland, t4 (thyroxine) and t3 (triiodothyronine), which act as a master-switch of metabolism…this results in metabolic activity of tissues decreased, and total resting energy reduced”.
Scene 15 - Decreasing Energy Deficit.
Text appears reading “Energy Deficit” which gets minimised by a large arrow pressing it down.
[VOICEOVER] “Our research aims to develop strategies to help people lose weight, and to minimise the negative effects of energy availability, by helping the public understand the science of the hormones, and the importance of balancing both food and exercise”.
Scene 16 – Credits
Video credits role onto the screen.
[VOICEOVER] Thank you for watching!
INSERT FINAL STORYBOARD DESIGN
Animation Development
The colour palette chosen was used with intention to reflect dietary choice and variety of food groups and types. I didn’t want the food icons in my artwork to only depict bad foods because an individual may be eating all the right foods, but not actually losing or gaining weight. I used the colour green throughout the animation to reflect that we aren’t just discussing unhealthy eating, but also over-eating of healthy foods. One paper I read discussed that colour palette wasn’t that important, and that the movement and subtitles are what made a successful animation, however, other papers discussed how the illustration style and colour palette was extremely important when trying to communicate a message. Because of these indifferences within the literature online I felt that I also had a lot of self-input into the design, as I started to identify what I personally thought made a successful infographic through online research. Because of this, I picked out pastel, bright colours much like I had seen in other YouTube videos and online infographics.
Scene 1 - Feet Illustration
Final Storyboard 1
Final Storyboard 2
Final Storyboard 3
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