Starting in August/2020 I had the pleasure of working as an animation intern for the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Lisbon, Portugal. For three months, I created, produced, and animated an educational short movie about one of the topics they had selected for an upcoming project. I chose to talk about Pluto and why it's not considered a planet anymore, but rather a dwarf-planet. My goal was to use my storytelling skills to create a story about a subject that may not interest everyone in a way that is compelling and fun for a younger audience.
My work began with research, lots of research. I read dozens of scientific papers on the subject of my choice and came up with a "small" summary of all of them, shown on the video on our left. My biggest challenge was the race against time, as I had to animate a movie calculated to have about 6 minutes in less than 3 months, so I had to work hard and smart to make it happen. I organized my time, had a detailed color-coded schedule for every phase of the production, as I (gladly) had done for University many times before and the rest is history.
In this infographics style 2D animation, I tell the story of Pluto, a celestial body who's having an identity crisis due to the change of his status from "planet" to "dwarf-planet". His therapist, Dr. Earth, is a qualified professional who helps him understand that maybe this name change might not so bad after all.
I thank Sérgio Pereira and João Retrê for all their help and the Institute for providing the voice recordings as well.