28th August 2019 - Comments Off on TED-Ed: The mysterious origins of life on Earth
TED-Ed: The mysterious origins of life on Earth
Working with marine ecologist Luka Seamus Wright, my latest animation for TED-Ed explores the origins of life on Earth, and more specifically, where it might have happened. The film takes us to the ocean floor where fissures in the Earth's crust cause hydrothermal vents to spew vast quantities of hot seawater; the probable cradle of life.
The TED-Ed process is to pair educators with animators to combine deep specialised knowledge with a talent for visualisation and thereby produce unique films that make complex subjects easier to understand without ever dumbing down the core lessons. In a sense, TED-Ed is the fissure in ocean floor, animators are the boiling water they spew, and the educators are the rich soup of minerals that bring forth life. I receive the script and voiceover from TED, from which I design and animate the film. I was also responsible for the sound design on this film, which was a lot of fun to make, comprised as it is of deep gurgling and aquatic percolation.
This is my tenth film for TED-Ed, many of which are collected here in my portfolio. Most recently I have taken on particle physics and the impossibility of dividing by zero, so as you will see, the subject matter is seldom light. My aim is also to make it fun.
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Script and voiceover are provided by The School of Life, for whom I have made 
Here in the news section of my site you'll find articles on most of my previous works for the School of Life, as well as a dedicated page in my portfolio, on topics ranging from 
As with previous films for the School of Life, I am given both the script, and Alain de Botton's voiceover to work from. Design and animation is then up to me. The film follows three couples, one of whom is struggling with a threatening new found love of pickles.
A general overview of my work for the school, together with links to several 
TED-Ed films work by paring animators with educators, and I was lucky enough to be pared with Jon Butterworth, a professor of physics who worked on the ATLAS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, and writer for 
Script and voiceover is provided by the School of Life, and I am set loose upon the visuals. This time I took the contrasting notion of physical growth and used it as a metaphor for growing emotionally, meaning I got to draw beating hearts, sprouting foliage and dancing skeletons. All in a day's work.
Still, it's fun to do something different, and every time I make a film using a different technique I hope to learn something that will inform my over all aesthetic. This film is no exception to that. From a creative perspective, the emphasis here was very much on the choice of images and the timing of the messaging. I am grateful to all the photographers who have made the World Bank's photo archive such a rich resource to plunder!