Save the Children Animation

I am so pleased to finally be able to put this out there. I spent the better part of my christmas holiday  squirrelled up in my bedroom working away at this project. The project was for Save the Children I knew this was the right brief for me as for anyone who knows me personally I am absolutely mad about books. A project about encouraging fathers to read to their children?! YES!

As I started to dig in to the brief and read Save the Children's statistics it was quite upsetting to see a lot of children aren't reading well by the age of 11 and struggle. Save the Children's campaign is to get children comfortable with reading so it helps them during primary school where the key developmental stages for basic reading and writing start. Their mission is for every child by 2025 to be leaving primary school as confident readers. the statistics shown were children from poorer income families were the ones that struggled.

We see so much on the news about horrid things happening all over the world which are important, but we are forgetting what is happening at home with all of our children? By just giving 10 minutes of your time per day to sit and read with your child and help them along you can help them become comfortable and confident with reading and also show it can be fun. I made it my mission to show how beautiful reading can be.

Save the Children had already made a video about their campaign but I found it far too over the top and exaggerated. The shock factor was far too heavy.


I wanted show the positive aspect of reading and how it can light up the imagination to not guilt trip fathers but shed some light on such an important subject. As creatives we need our imagination and reading has been a large part of my development creatively.

I worked along side Joseph Standen again who is a wonderful Motion graphic designer but this time I was the creator and in control of the story. It was a huge step for me to try something totally out of my comfort zone but this project couldn't have been better suited for an animation. I don't think a poster or a zine would have had the same effect. What a fantastic experience it has been and I have learn a lot from Joseph about how to draw for an animation.

Please do leave a comment as I would love to know what you thought be it good or any criticisms you might have.

St Francis Work experience.

I spend the week with St Francis school for girls and it was incredible. The girls were great and at the time of my visit it wasn't far off of the end of GCSE and A level exams so the exhibition was still up of their work.

The exhibition blew me away the girls were all incredibly talented and not one student seemed to be under performing, all the artists (because thats what they are!) were different and had already found what had interested them by such a young age of 15/16. 

One of their amazing projects (which i wish we had been tasked to do at college or uni) was to create a dress inspired by the harry potter films. 

The outcome was just amazing. Sadly I couldn't take any photos and I wish I had because they were all just incredible. 

While i was at St Francis they had 2 days which were art days that they have every year and the girls are off time table and choose the activities they want to do. Due to the school being very eco friendly one of the tasks at hand was to create a sea like weaving into the tennis courts railings using only recycled materials. It was good fun and the girls all got stuck in and the outcome was lovely. 

One of the other activities took me to the Biology room where we were making dyes out of food. Yes we created dyes out of the berries and fruits the girls brought in and we had to experiment with tie dying and batik methods. It did take me back to being a teenager when most of the girls used the batik method to write "I love Harry Styles" and "1D's biggest fan!" (although I did have better taste as Busted was around when i was their age!)

I made a little friend in the Biology lab :) it is a lime green giant stick insect

I didn't hold it :(