Vesalius Trust-A-Thon
Background
The Vesalius Trust-A-Thon is a virtual team challenge that aims to raise funds to support student and professional research in the field of medical and scientific communication.
Team Blood Type BVIS created an animation based on the prompt 'Apart But Together' in the course of less than a week. We fundraised over $2,000 and raised awareness for the Vesalius Trust, as well as winning both First Place and the People’s Choice Award.
Team: Ben Colvin, Emi Frohn, Katie Harvey, Jeni Zernick, Sam Palahnuk, Allysa Benedict
My Role: Animation, Music Selection, and Fundraising
Purpose: Raise awareness and fundraise for the Vesalius Trust
Awards: First Place and The People’s Choice
Process
For this event, we had a little under a week. At the time, myself and my fellow grad students were newly minted second years with little animation experience under our collective belt. Because we were still in school during the Trust-A-Thon, we split into two groups. The first group worked Monday through Wednesday morning to create the assets used for the animation. The second group, my group, worked Wednesday afternoon through Friday to get everything animated and composited.
While assets were under way, us animators had some time to sit around and wait. Katie and I searched the internet for the right music to use for our animation. We planned to split the animation into three chunks, each to be animated by a different animator. I created some demo animations to get ahead of a few animation challenges and set a consistent style.
The assets were handed off to us Wednesday afternoon. Our animation was driven by the beat of the music, but we planned to have three different animators working on different chunks of the animation simultaneously. How could we coordinate all of the timing to match up? Katie and I stayed up late into the night Wednesday setting the main keyframes of the animation to match the music. Then all the animators could work simultaneously to add curves, additional keyframes, and other effects without having to worry about the overall timing. Believe it or not, we were done with time to spare on Friday.
To the winner go the bragging rights, so I think it is worth pointing out, Team Blood Type BVIS > AXS Studios. If you want a rematch we are ready and waiting.