WaterAid, established in 1981, has one key goal. Making clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene a normal part of everyday life for everyone, everywhere. Today, WaterAid continues to change millions of lives, working towards their goal in 28 countries with the support of donations.
- Style: Stop-motion
- Client: WaterAid
- Year: 2021
The Girls Who Turned To Water
Access to clean water and sanitation are fundamental human rights.
Each year the charity shares a focused winter appeal to raise further awareness with the hope of encouraging donations. Our brief was to produce a conceptual animated film to support the winter appeal. It also aims to start conversations on gender, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) and education.
The Project (Stop Motion Animation)
This campaign focusses on the impact that a lack of access to clean water has on thousands of girls’ education. It is often a girl’s responsibility in a family to walk to collect water, which is often dirty. This results in days away from the classroom. Without clean water, they miss out on the knowledge to create change.
The Creative
The client wanted to use stop motion puppets and real miniature sets imbued with detailed textures. Initial tests of a puppet, which looked hand-carved, won the client over. Therefore, we retained (and celebrated) this chiselled, faceted look across the whole puppet cast. All the characters, costumes and location designs are based on image references of real people. All of whom are based in and around a school in Lehan, Nepal which the charity has previously supported.
A key element and also the trickiest part of the story was turning the girls into water. This was executed in camera using a mixture of coloured pallet wrap, resin replacements and ink. Smaller elements were shot against glass in the lighting set up of each scene and composited into shot.
Capturing the correct emotions was extremely important. We used single beaded eyes to give a wide-eyed spark to the characters. Simple mouth movements were done in camera, hand drawn for an authentically timed performance rather than being added in post.
Post-Production
In house, we completed rig removal, clean ups and VFX. The music used is a piece by a contemporary Nepalese artist, Ankit Shrestha. Our Designer sourced the music which mixed with the sound design by our team. Other elements supplied included 9:16 social cut downs and textless versions of the film for future usage.
Client Testimonial
“…a fast turnaround on this project and for high quality work – it’s been a pleasure working with you all. Everyone who’s seen the film internally has been really impressed…”