I was brought in as a freelance Creative Director by Aardman to create an HTML5 interactive animation for the BBC.
We produced a dramatic black-and-white animation based on Tennyson’s poem ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ and embedded interactive elements that would help GCSE students learn about the text and revise for their English exams. This was for the students’ own use outside the classroom, so it had to be compelling for a teen audience.
As well as conveying information, the interface tracked the student’s progress and measured their retention of what they had learned.
It was tested with students as a pilot by the BBC, with the aim of commissioning further work following the same model.
Below is the video I storyboarded and helped to create with Aardman’s fantastic animation team. This version does not show the interactive layers of information, which I also wrote in consultation with an education specialist. Nor does it show the subtle parallax effects the user triggered when they moved their mouse around the interface.
David Varela 