Project

Rosalind Franklin Animated Short

Client

N/A

Year

2020

PROJECT Summary

The goal of this passion project was to create an educational animated short about the story of Rosalind Franklin and the DNA double helix, in under one minute.

Research

To ensure I told the story accurately, I collected information from various sources such as biographical articles about Franklin, the book The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, as well as various interviews with colleagues of Franklin, including James Watson.

Design Process

The first step in creating this short was to assemble a mood board. To aid in the visual storytelling, actual archive images were used. This included scans of publications and photographs of Rosalind Franklin in her lab. Given the age of the archive photographs, I kept the colour palette grayscale, with ripped paper textures, and a pop of colour sparingly throughout.

The script was then developed, including as much information as possible in under 60 seconds. Condensing such a complex story was a challenge and there are undoubtedly many details that had to be omitted given the time. Based on that condensed script, I created a rough storyboard to determine the pacing of proper visuals for the video.

Since the main design elements were paper textures and photographs, I animated each asset to move like they were being pushed around, as if they were a part of a scrapbook.

Final Deliverable

The final animated short succinctly tells the story of Rosalind Franklin and the DNA helix in under 60 seconds, with a design that matches the tone and time period.