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Sheep Dreams

A Narrative Public Health Animation





Research Gap:

  • Limited research on integrating narrative, animation, and public health content
  • Research on narrative and public health is focused on written/live video media
  • Lack of guidelines and defined methods on writing narrative and animating public health animations
  • Lack of clear definitions for narrative elements that can be used for transporting an audience in the context of a fictional scientific story
  • Sleep public health communications mostly text based with some videos


    • Research Question:
    How can a specialized model be developed that adapts the transportation-imagery model to a health animation about sleep?

    Research Significance:
  • Establish a model for narrative public health animation that could transport a general audience and be applied to other public health topics
  • Add to pre-existing studies on animation and narrative
  • Final animation will add to the public health content existing for sleep hygiene in order to address widespread sleep deficiency associated with a variety of health risks

    • Methods:

  • Guidelines were written to apply the transportation-imagery model to animation, a model first defined by Green & Brock (2000) to evaluate the efficacy of a narrative based on its ability to immerse the audience in its story-world
  • Major learning goals for the animation on sleep hygiene were identified
  • Narrative script and storyboard developed following transportation-imagery guidelines, creative writing techniques, and using the Classic Aristotelian 3-Act Structure, which is widely used in screenwriting and found in many other successful animated shorts. The first act sets up the story premise, world, main characters, and main character goals. The second act encompasses the action and antagonistic conflicts the protagonist must perform and face, and the third act wraps up the problem with the protagonist finding their solution (Brutsch, 2015).
  • Considerations to keep the narrative universal: wordless story, non-human characters, and special soundtrack (Vandormael et al., 2021)


    • Storyboard

  • Assets, backgrounds and characters, were designed using Adobe Illustrator following character design archetypes, shapes, and aesthetics (Tillman, 2011)



  • Final animation created in After Effects using Duik Bassel and True Comp Duplicator Extensions



    • Rigging Using Duik Bassel




    Special thanks to my research committee, Kelly Cloninger, Rex Twedt, and Samantha Bond, my content expert, Dr. Lauretta Quinn and the UIC Sleep Science Center, and to the UIC Biomedical Visualization Program for their assistance and guidance in completing this project.


    References:
    Brütsch, M. (2015). The three-act structure: Myth or magical formula? Journal of Screenwriting, 6(3), 301–326. https://doi.org/10.1386/josc.6.3.301_1
    CDC. (2022). Sleep and sleep disorders. Division of Population Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/index.html
    Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701
    Tillman, B. (2011). Creative character design. Elsevier.
    Vandormael, A., Adam, M., Greuel, M., Gates, J., Favaretti, C., Hachaturyan, V., & Bärnighausen, T. (2021). The effect of a wordless, animated, social media video intervention on COVID-19 prevention: Online randomized controlled Trial. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 7(7), e29060–e29060. https://doi.org/10.2196/29060
    Web Accessibility Initiative. (2019, May 10). Accessibility principles. https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-principles/

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