St David's College

St David’s enjoys a unique position in educational terms as it’s the only Catholic sixth form college in Wales. It was founded by the Archdiocese of Cardiff to be a place where faith is respected and encouraged, a deeply human place where people find understanding and friendship.

To create an animated video for an educational campaign funded by St David’s College, to raise awareness of the dangers that face young people before and during their first holiday abroad with friends. Young people are generally naive to potential dangers and no one knows this better than Dr Channon, who’s 18-year-old son tragically lost his life after a fatal fall while on holiday with his friends in Mallorca in 2018.

The college is fully supportive of Dr Channon’s campaign and believes it is an area that is not normally covered by the pastoral provision, but such a current area as lots of young people experience their first holiday without their parents at this time. The video was to be aimed at 17-20-year-olds who may be embarking on their first holiday parent-free. It is hoped that the safety campaign will raise awareness of the dangers that may be present, the need to prepare thoroughly and the importance of staying together as a group.

The typical attitude of ‘it will never happen to me’ needed to be challenged and young people needed to be engaged and made aware that being prepared could make a difference in their lives or those of their friends. The main challenge here was not to show the age group in a stereotypical way (perhaps drinking or being irresponsible) as that may disengage them from watching, so our idea was to show a comparison between two groups of friends. One who makes sensible decisions and one group who does not.

We were keen to find a balance between showing the serious side of the message and a style that was appealing to the age group. Our initial concept art for our character’s really resonated with the client and we were off to a strong start before moving on to storyboarding.

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. St David’s College, because they’d had complete ownership and control throughout the whole process, green-lit the storyboards with no changes and were itching with excitement to see it all brought to life.

Our animation wizards set about building the characters and drawing the environments. We are incredibly proud to have such talented artists working here at Tiny Wizard Studio. They get very passionate and invested in projects and knew that something that has this much emotion attached to it should have a personal touch with hand-drawn characters and traditional methods. We’re so pleased that St David’s College could see the value in this too. And because the organisation is based in Wales, we were so pleased to be able to produce a Welsh language version too.