NARF Food Allergy Challenge

Here’s a fun and challenging job from last year working with longtime collaborators Feed Films for The Natasha Allergy Research Foundation. I was tasked with creating the bulk of the post-production motion graphics on The Food Allergy Challenge, a short film that was part of the recently launched Allergy School offering free, practical resources to help teachers create inclusive and safe environments for children with food allergies.

The brief and script called for the creation of a 3d character of some sort that a team of real children could interact with along with an interface that could house a fully designed and animated allergy-based quiz. The screen took priority so for the initial designs I played with the idea of a fun but bulky physical tablet display that could hover in front of the team. I created some virtual camera views for the shoot with 3d models of the tablet and team that soon ran up against issues such as the back of a large device obscuring the children in some camera angles. Almost as an aside I had designed a small flying robot character that could emerge from the large tablet. It soon made much more sense, logically and practically, for this small hovering robot host to be the focus and be able to project virtual transparent screens into a space in front of the children that they could interact with. Crucially, it was also easier to manipulate these screens to work for all the potential camera angles.

I set about designing the interactive screens while the short shoot was happening then it was full steam ahead on a rapid post-production schedule. The director, and old buddy, Mark Taplin did a terrific job with the shoot and edited together a great looking working cut of the film so I knew exactly which scenes required visual effects. All of the robot host scenes were then modelled, lit and animated in Cinema 4d and rendered with Redshift to composite with the 2d/3d screen layers and animations in After Effects. A number of sequences featured the children in ‘hype mode’ which had them dancing along with animated backgrounds made from 2d and 3d elements all roto-brushed and composited with After Effects also.

It was quite an intense but satisfying couple of weeks of post-production and I was happy with the results. I’ve included here a VFX reel compilation from the final film, some stills and a selection of initial development ideas and a quick tracking motion test animation featuring the robot and an early screen design.

I’m very pleased to say that The Food Allergy Challenge has been shortlisted at the Brand Film Awards for Best Post-Production Motion Graphics for Feed Films and Mark Taplin is up for a well-deserved Best Director nomination. Winners are announced at the end of April. You can see this on the main site along with other animation work here.