Friends School of Baltimore came to Storyfarm at the start of a fundraising effort to raise a lot of money in order to achieve three goals: grow the school’s endowment for financial aid, transform an existing building into a state-of-the-art performing and visual arts center, and sustain the excellence of their programs through annual giving. This would require more money than they had ever raised in the past, and therefore they needed a video to pull the heart strings. I helped deliver that with a photographic treatment, and a year later they were back to ask for an animation to thank the contributors and announce that they had actually raised the goal based on the response.
I spent some time with their brochures and website getting into their brand identity and thinking through the outcome of what this money would do for the school. Part of the funds would go towards a building that would focus on the arts and even more specifically, the fine arts; the stuff we make with our hands. I brought that handmade feeling to the animation by introducing textures to make things less digital, and incorporated some light cel animation techniques.
A challenge with this project was that there would be no voiceover. Someone could get the whole message without turning their speakers on or without having it play aloud in public on a phone. Knowing this, my first step was going through the lengthy script and really breaking it down to be as concise as possible and timing it out to be around a minute.
