Dayton Children’s: What to Expect

The pandemic was tough. No doubt. And during that time, families needed to know what to expect when they went anywhere. We were presented with the challenge of helping parents understand how important it was to take their children in for routine and necessary appointments, even during a time of uncertainty and heightened awareness about germs and safety.

Year

2020

What We Did

Animation, Illustration, Design, Branding, Strategy, Writing

Process

When Dayton Children’s first approached us with the idea of helping tell families what to expect at the hospital during the pandemic, the whole team was excited to get started. We love thinking differently and we couldn’t put a camera to this because of distancing and filming rules – so it had to be animated. We also felt a responsibility to tell this story in a fun, light-hearted way to help ease some of the concerns that both parents and children had. COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of providing great healthcare in a safe and clean environment, and that’s something that Dayton Children’s has always prioritized. But it was more important than ever to share with the community how safe Dayton Children’s is. But with this really important messaging – came a very short time frame – so we dove in right away.

Our first step in every project is to come together as a team and try to hone in on what story we want to tell. For this piece, in particular, we drew a lot of inspiration from our own childhoods, recalling some of our favorite fables and rhymes from those times.

Once we land on a good story approach, we start writing. This script truly highlighted all the important modifications that Dayton Children’s made to make each visit as comfortable as possible for every single patient…but still had a whimsical touch that provided a much-needed lightness to the story. After writing was complete, the team took that script and started creating.

Throughout the next few days, our team worked together to gather design inspiration and start flushing out the look and feel of this piece. We took inspiration from an illustration style we’d already established and used for Dayton Children’s projects in the past and built on it. The goal was to create scenes that had both warmth and whimsy, while still being clear with the information. More specifically, we focused on creating meaningful interactions between caretakers and patients and used those interactions to influence our design decisions throughout the rest of the story. We then took all of our sketches and put them together in one solidified document, outlining each style frame for design. Then we got to work translating our sketches into finished designs. We really dove into the beautiful character design, interesting animation and scenery layouts with a beautiful color paletted.

The Final Piece

Overall, working on a limited timeframe presented an exciting challenge we met head on, and we’re extremely proud of how this piece turned out. In just shy of 17 days, this story went from a moment of ‘what can we create?’ to a fully realized, beautiful piece that our team is wildly proud of. We had an amazing partner with Dayton Children’s and each time we work together feels like magic. It just goes to show that even in a pandemic, sharing stories is more important than ever, and our team is up for the challenge.