Initial Research

In February 2016, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to shadow the transplant physicians at St. Joseph's Kidney Transplant Inpatient Unit & Clinic. During this time, I sat in on appointments and observed physician-patient communication to survey the level and quality of patient education. I found that knowledge was only orally translated to patients. Despite having a facility for patient education, it was not actively used. Some pamphlets and booklets were made available to patients, but otherwise the clinic contained no visual teaching resources.

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Building the Narrative

To come up with the visual metaphors for this project, I asked the transplant physicians what analogies they used when teaching immunosuppression. All of them said they use war/battle metaphors. I did some additional research and found literature that suggested negative connotations to the human body were detrimental to patient healthcare. As a result, we came up with a new metaphor: relating the human body and it's immune system to a flower garden and a weed-killing system. This metaphor informed the rest of the narrative and the visuals surrounding their communication.

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Writing the Script

After the narrative was designed, I wrote a script to complement the proposed visual metaphors. Several iterations were made between myself and my content advisors.

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Storyboarding

The storyboard process was long and arduous. I had lots of different ideas to best visualize the script. Overcome with frustration, I transferred all of my ideas from paper onto Post-It notes, and shuffled them around until I had a product that supported the flow of the narrative and matched the aesthetic of the project. Once I had figured this out, I transferred the ideas to a proper storyboard. 

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Preparing for Pre-Production

Once the storyboarding process was complete, I created a document that broke down the narrative into smaller scenes and sequences. I organized my scenes, script, and required visual assets into smaller, digestible tasks.

 

Creating Visual Assets

Once the storyboarding process was complete, I created a document that broke down the narrative into smaller scenes and sequences. I organized my scenes, script, and required visual assets into smaller, digestible tasks.

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Animating

Once the storyboarding process was complete, I created a document that broke down the narrative into smaller scenes and sequences. I organized my scenes, script, and required visual assets into smaller, digestible tasks.

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Editing

After the first draft of the animation was created, I went through and cleaned up parts of the animation that needed extra attention. To the right you can see some changes that were made to visual style of some of the characters.

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Music and Sound Effects

Once I was happy with the flow and style of the animation, I manually inserted audio tracks into After Effects to create the mood and ambience for several scenes. 

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Additional Modules​

While the above outlines the general process for creating one animation, transPLANTS is expected to have 4 modules in total. Development of these modules is currently ongoing and will tackle other areas in transplantation such as immunosuppressive medications, donor options, and short term and long term healthcare outcomes. Three modules are currently completed. Stay tuned for more information!