I pitched the idea of exploring the difference between tap water and bottled water, as that seems to be something a lot of people are interested in, the quality of their drinking water. I’ve also always personally been curious about it myself so I was able to latch onto that idea from the beginning.
As for my specific role in this project, I was the animator, modeler, editor, basically in control of creating the visual aspects. I wanted to go for a very simple, cartoonish, look for this project, but still with a good level of detail to flesh out the world. I built a variety of sets both interior and exterior to show off the natural and industrial sides of this process. Early on it was decided that we would talk about this issue of water quality by going through the process of sourcing and treating bottled water first, and then we would do the same for tap water, to contrast the two.
I came into this project not knowing much about the water treatment world, so in a way I saw my role as acting as a bridge between the experts and people wanting to learn about their water quality. Animation is a wonderful tool for teaching and explaining these sorts of complex subjects. Our writers on this project did a good job on breaking this subject down to be very accessible and easy to grasp, with the idea that we’d point people to more in depth information if they chose to seek it out.
I had a lot of fun on this project, being in control of creating the visual aspect I was really able to explore my own creativity. We developed this approval process where I would show my work and things would be tweaked and changed if things needed to be portrayed a little differently, or if things were unclear, so it was a nice collaborative experience. We ended up with many different versions of various scenes, and I feel we refined it to be as clear as possible.
I was able to employ the full animation pipeline starting with storyboards and some concept art. From then I began modeling our sets and props, while working on lighting and surfacing for materials. From then I worked on animation for both the camera and some objects like the vehicles, and water moving through the environments. After everything in the scenes was finalized and rendering was complete I began the editing process. For the editing side of things I worked on some sound design to help flesh out our world even more. We contracted a couple voice actors and they also did a really great job on narration.
It was rewarding to be apart of every step and see it slowly come together. I also learned quite a bit myself about water sources and water treatment myself.
Author: Clayton Rimbert, 3D Animator and Modeler
