Bringing Patient Stories to Life with Animation

PCORI (Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute) is a government-sponsored nonprofit organization that funds patient-centered comparative effectiveness research.

They approached gravitytank, my employer at the time, for guidance and help to promote their messaging to patients and caregivers within the asthma community in order to increase participation in their ongoing research projects.

They were interested in producing a video, and had recorded some great phone interviews, but had little to no imagery or footage on hand. So we did what any reasonable designers would do—we started making and animating.

Seth Mabbott—my friend and colleague on the project—is a talented, multidisciplinary designer who also happens to be an excellent illustrator.

While I was editing the hour-long interviews down into 90-second vignettes that we could use, Seth began cranking out drawings, animated sequences, and more.

We didn't really have the time for a ton of cel animation so I set up an After Effects file where we blended animated sequences together with motion-designed brand and illustration assets and masked the difference with stock textures and frame-by-frame displacement and distortion.

It was a nice departure from a lot of the other research and video work we were doing at gravityank at the time, and I've continued to use and develop the simulated animation technique on a ton of projects since.