UN Sustainable Development Goal 16
Experimental animation exploring how access to information empowers individuals and institutions.
Coursework and personal work from Carnegie Mellon, originally published on a separate Framer site.
A deliberately abstract goal
This project was created as the project 3 assignment for MA Studio I at Carnegie Mellon University in Fall 2025: develop a short video that interprets one given UN Sustainable Development Goal — Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.
Research-first, then hand-drawn
I took this project to deliberately confront a relatively abstract Sustainable Development Goal and to practice research-led design rather than rushing to visuals. After a previous studio project (a poster series) where shallow research followed by premature visual execution produced thin concepts, I used this brief to test a research-first workflow — exploring how a focused subtopic of SDG 16, specifically public access to information, could be embodied through concise, voice-driven animation.
I kept visuals open for interpretation rather than fixing them early into literal symbols through several storyboard iterations.
From After Effects to hand-drawn
I shifted from a planned After Effects approach to hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation, to put a more humanized characteristic into the piece.
Five hundred hand-drawn frames
Directing a child narrator and producing over five hundred hand-drawn frames taught me practical lessons in voice direction, audio mixing, timing, spacing, and perspective. I also gained confidence in trusting a rough, human aesthetic as a legitimate design choice.
What I would fix up front
If I did it differently, I would finalize the script and detailed directing notes before the first recording so pronunciation, breathing, and pacing are resolved up front. I would also define an audio plan during storyboarding to map where voice, music, and silence should sit, and fix technical specifications — canvas size, frame rate, file formats — at the start to avoid time-consuming redraws.
Late conceptual pivots and unclear production specs drove much of the extra work on this project. To prevent that next time: run small animation prototypes to decide production method early, set realistic frame budgets and milestone checkpoints, prepare audio stems for final mixing, and produce a concise voice-direction packet for any narrator — preserving the rough, human quality that became the piece’s strength while improving efficiency and coherence.