Children's Commissioner for Wales: Project Vote

The Children’s Commissioner for Wales holds the very important job of telling people why children’s rights are so important, and looking at how decisions made by public bodies in Wales, including the Welsh Government, affect them. Working with a team, the Children’s Commissioner listens to children and young people from across Wales to find out what’s important to them. 

Coming to the Wizards with a brand new venture, The Children’s Commissioner for Wales explained they were launching Project Vote, Wales’ first ever national parallel election for young people aged 11-15. 

Project Vote was to be launched in May 2021. It would be a chance for young people to cast their vote for an actual political party in a mock election, and then see how their votes compared to the real-life local elections. With the voting age in Wales lowering to 16, Project Vote was a tool that would be used to help engage young people with the political world. 

With a great brief and loads of information, the Project Vote discovery stage was smooth sailing! We got to grips with all the aspects of Project Vote, such as how it would work, what our audience would be like and where it would be shown. As well as getting acquainted with the bright and bold Project Vote branding, which was a great tool in helping us bring The Children’s Commissioner of Wales’ animation to life.

The wizards wanted to keep the script as digestible as possible. Because we can all agree that 11-15 year-olds haven’t the longest attention spans, and teachers already don’t have enough hours in the day.  So we had to make sure to include only the most important information – how to register  for Project Vote, how to get students engaged, and finally  how the voting works. 

With great brand guidelines, our animators had a strong base to start bringing Project Vote’s animation to life, but they didn’t have any characters. Therefore, one of the first tasks was building a set of characters to fit into the Project Vote universe. The Children’s Commissioner for Wales loved them! Which meant our animators could get started on the storyboard stage. 

Storyboarding is the first time the client really gets a chance to visualise how the animation will look and flow from beginning to end. It gives everyone a chance to make any last changes to the language, scenery, colours, and characters before we enter the production stage. 

Because our process is rock solid, any changes or concerns have been worked out by now and storyboarding is a smooth process. The Project Vote storyboard showed exactly how the animation would be built from beginning to end, and The Children’s Commissioner for Wales team were over the moon. 

Our animation wizards set about building the characters and creating assets in line with Project Vote’s brand guidelines. We are incredibly proud to have such talented artists working here at Tiny Wizard Studio, creating an explainer video as engaging as this is no easy feat. Project Vote was ready to go, with The Children’s Commissioner signing off on the animation almost instantly. Since then Project Vote has engaged over 10,000 young people across Wales and in both English and Welsh.