FACT OR FICTION
FACT OR FICTION
ROLESCLIENT: Large Pharmaceutical
AGENCY: Inizio Evoke
DIRECTOR OF CONTENT: Mack Garrison
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Cory Livengood
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Meryn Hayes
ART DIRECTOR: John McGowan
PRODUCER: Ashley Targonski
DIRECTOR AND STOP MOTION LEAD: Hayley Morris
ASSISTANT STOP MOTION ANIMATOR: Ru Kuwahata
LEAD FABRICATOR Ru Kuwahata
TECH DIRECTOR: Max Porter
GAFFER: Scott Beer
PROP STYLIST: Cameron Smith
HMU AND WARDROBEValerie Gengras
PHARMA PATIENT (ACTRESS): Jennifer
TALENT AGENT: Jordan Kaleoaloha Canaday
LOCATION: Animus Studio
STORYBAORDS: Kat Higgins
3D PAPER: Steph Hallett & Sehee Kim
ANIMATIC: Tiny Inventions
PHOTO RETOUCHER Lauren Rodibaugh
ANIMATION: Matea Losenegger, Drew Jackson, Zak Tietjen, Sehee Kim, Steph Hallett
DETAILSAnimation and video are great ways to simplify complexity and help educate audiences. That’s why we were especially excited to highlight an often misunderstood and overlooked condition—Prurigo Nodularis (PN)—with empathy, clarity, and creativity for our friends Inizio Evoke and their pharmaceutical client.
Through a patient’s perspective, we aimed to humanize the condition, showing how PN affects individuals differently across skin tones and experiences, while reinforcing the science. Using a live-action and stop-motion approach, we created a tactile story that felt authentic and real, visually reflecting the physical and emotional world of living with PN that emphasizes key truths about the disease—its distinction from eczema, and the impact of chronic inflammation.
Ultimately, this story was crafted not just to inform, but to empower patients to have better conversations with their doctors and feel seen in a space where their condition is rarely spotlighted.
DISCOVERYThe discovery phase for the project starts where all meaningful creative work should—with empathy, research, and a deep desire to understand. As a creative partner, our first priority was to uncover the lived realities of those affected by Prurigo Nodularis (PN) and what quickly became clear is that many patients feel unseen, their symptoms dismissed or mistaken for more common skin conditions like eczema. We wanted to create a spot that embodied the feeling of living with the condition and that’s where the stop motion idea started to take root.
Our mood board for the project started with some early style frame mock-ups with our PN patient on the couch but we also pulled inspiration from stop motion greats, like PES, and our eventual stop motion partners at Shape and Shadow (visualized above).
SCRIPTINGThe second phase of our process focused on script development—a critical step in aligning story, science, and visuals before entering production. With stop-motion animation’s highly detailed and linear nature, there’s little room for improvisation, so clarity was key.
We crafted the script not only to ensure medical accuracy and emotional resonance, but also to define the visual direction alongside the narrative. By including a visual column, we were able to clearly map out what would be happening on screen at every moment. Corresponding storyboards then brought the visual to life, showing how each scene would unfold. This allowed the client, agency, and animation team to move forward with a shared vision—minimizing ambiguity and ensuring every frame served the story and respected the subject matter.
STORYBOARDING & ANIMATICThe next step in our process was creating an animatic. Animatics provide timing and pacing for the video. Using rough sketches from the storyboards, in addition to some early color suggestions, the video begins to take shape. Animatics are the critical last piece created before moving into fabrication and production acting as the map and guidance for the campaign.
With the animatic approved, we worked with our friends at Shape and Shadow to create a more detailed round of mood boards highlighting the paper-craft style for all the assets, the color palette we were going to use, as well as specific ideation for the environments and a wardrobe for our talent. All the details had to be buttoned-up ahead of time so we could fabricate all the necessary elements prior to shoot day.
With all the assets created and a plan of action for the shoot, the next step was the most time consuming: the painstaking process of capturing frame-by-frame animation. Luckily on shoots that are practical like this, the post-production work was minimal and focused more on callouts, supers, color correction and minor animated elements.
We loved working on this project because of the real human impact it offered. Blending story and science with a creative medium like stop-motion gave us the opportunity to build something especially unique and human focused. Projects like these offer a lot of complex challenges but also highlight the importance of collaboration and bringing together great teams to make wonderful work.
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