Brave Bear Trust: Digitising a Story Book During a Pandemic

Brave Bear Trust is committed to keeping children everywhere safe from exploitation.

The charity educates, empowers, and equips children to know how to keep themselves and others safe from exploitation through their story book, Brave, and a range of accompanying resources.

This was predominantly delivered face-to-face through school visits and talks. When the pandemic hit, it impacted Brave Bear Trust like so many other educational providers.

Unable to access schools and utilise the hard copy versions of the book, Brave Bear Trust knew they needed to digitise their approach if they wanted to keep their audiences engaged and informed.

Brief.

Brave Bear Trust were looking to adapt their approach with a digital storybook and assets that would help them reach existing audiences online when face-to-face talks and visits weren’t possible.

The charity also wanted to take it one step further and harness digital assets to grow their audiences and expand their reach to even more children in schools, homes, and communities across the UK. 

At Vindico, we’re known for helping organisations adapt to changing climates. And we had just the solution to transform Brave Bear Trust’s storybook into a digital animation that could be accessed by anyone, anytime.

#ThinkPurple Solution.

Vindico Lead Creative, Kieran, worked closely with the team at Brave Bear Trust to create an

animated video that would tell the story of their book, Brave.

This digital animation needed to convey the story in a way that was sympathetic, engaging, and empowering. It also needed to be easily accessible online, any time, and for free.

To deliver the best possible outcome, this digital animation project was split into two stages.

The first stage is what we dubbed ‘the ‘stitching together stage’. It involved Kieran arranging every video clip sent over from the client into the correct order, editing and cutting bloopers, and making sure the video flowed seamlessly.

The second stage is what Kieran described as ‘the really fun stage’. This involved our Lead Creative cutting each image out into separate layers and individually animating each figure in those images.

The animations turned out great, but – always ones to take a project to the next level – we decided to add background noise during the animated sections to really bring each scene to life!

Once the animations were complete, Kieran inserted them throughout the video and fine-tuned the file with some simple styling and sound tweaks to bring the whole thing together.

“This was a really fun project to be involved in,” says Kieran.

“The finished video turned out great, and it’s nice to know that such a fun project to work on will also be used for such a great cause by engaging with children and raising more awareness of exploitation.”

Here’s what Brave Bear Trust’s CEO, Heather Lewis had to say:

“Brave Bear Trust are so grateful to Vindico for their generosity and excellence in producing an animated video version of our story book, Brave.

“In 2020, more children than adults were identified as potential victims of slavery for the first time ever in the UK.  We want to enable children to know how to keep themselves and others safe through our sensitive and appropriate resources, and Vindico have helped to enable that to happen. 

“Kieran has been extremely generous with his time, communicated with excellence and we are so thankful for all he and the team have given to us.  It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Kieran and the Vindico team!”