#HappyPeriod
#HappyPeriod is an organization advocating for period wellness and menstrual education. I had the opportunity to work in conjunction with three of my peers to create an animated short for them to post on social media. The full short can found on #HappyPeriod's Instagram, and Facebook.
The character design process began by looking at various period products, and the shapes and silhouettes they had.
I sketched some characters based on these shapes to pitch to #HappyPeriod and my animation team, keeping in mind that they would need to be turned into digital puppets later.
After a few design tweaks, we decided the tampon character would be the star, and since the short was based on a first period story, I created a child version of her as well, with shorter, rounded shapes and a more youthful outfit.
In order to reflect their established brand, the color palette was drawn from the yellow-orange in the #HappyPeriod logo, and each of the other characters and backgrounds were colored using turquoise, pink, or purple to match it as well. (The period underwear character from the initial design stage also made a re-appearance, this time pink and a bit more perky!)
The subtle crumpled paper texture was tested both in illustration and animation form before implementing it in the final short. It was added to the digital puppets along with the drop shadow both to emulate little paper puppets in the real world, and to make the story feel a bit like a diary entry.
The puppets were all rigged and animated using Adobe After Effects, and the lip sync was created with several individual mouth shapes attached to keyframes that could be triggered one after the other when certain sounds were made. This allowed the characters to finally come to life, and allowed the happy period story to be told.
Storyboard: Moby Bolinger
Character Design: Allison Irlbeck, Moby Bolinger Roscoe Rappaport
Digital Puppet Rigging: Roscoe Rappaport
Animation: Allison Irlbeck, Laura Yee, Moby Bolinger, Roscoe Rappaport
Background Design: Moby Bolinger, Laura Yee
Prop Design: Allison Irlbeck
