Grant’s journey is an informational video I worked on during my time at ANSWER.it. The main purpose of the video was to raise awareness of the little-known technical aspects involved in the grants making process, the variety of criteria a grant must meet before making it to the review committee, and the industry-wide impact of failed proposals.
Grant proposals are the primary source of funding for many nonprofits, but they also have a high failure rate. It’s no wonder that the grantmaking process is a sensitive topic for the nonprofit sector. The video needed to be light-hearted and approachable, so a hand-drawn cartoony style was chosen.
Meet Grant, our peppy first-time grant application. Grant was designed to look memorable, cute and relatable. As a character, he’s determined and optimistic, traits that keep him going despite encountering many challenges on his journey.
Besides giving a lighter tone to a sensitive topic, the cartoony look helps make the technical aspects of the grant approval process more approachable.
Grant himself is designed to be modular and easy to animate. He has several pieces that can be re-used to create different poses and expressions. The modular aspect of the character also makes him easy to re-use outside the video, making a new image of Grant for social media is a breeze.
While Grant was custom-made for the video many background elements were sourced from stock image/photography sites and altered to fit the video style due to time and budget constraints. This sort of workflow allowed for more time to be spent on other aspects of the video.
Click on any thumbnail below to see a larger screen capture image of the video.
