Project Feature: Kidney Donor Conversations

Over the past year, I’ve been working with Kidney Donor Conversations to create a number of videos to help educate people about living kidney donation. To be honest, when I went into this project I was a little intimidated, I knew nothing about kidney donation and had never done an animated video project of this size before. But Glenna and Amanda at Kidney Donor Conversations were an absolute delight to work with, and over the course of a few months we created our first video- and I learned a lot about living kidney donation along the way!

The first project “Understanding Living Kidney Donation” offers a broad overview of living kidney donation, with information on why you should donate a kidney, who is able to donate, and what to expect from the surgery.

Along with the full video which is around 15 minutes in length, we also created a shorter version, so be shared on social media and serve as an introduction and invite people to learn more.

I’m really happy with how these first couple of videos came out. I had experience creating shorter animated videos before and incorporated motion graphics into a lot of my other projects, but this was the first time I created a long-form video that was purely animation and motion graphics. I learned a lot on those first projects, and when KDC said they wanted to make another video focusing on kidney donor vouchers, I was excited to jump back in and see what else I could do.

Similarly to the first video, we also created a shorter version to be shared online and in presentations. The goal of this video was to offer a deep dive into the voucher programs since it’s not something most people are aware of.

I learned so much more about animating while working on this second set of videos. I had the basics down and feel like I was able to try out some new effects to bring more life to the kidney characters. This video told much more of a story, so I created different characters to follow throughout the video. The best part was making all the accessories for the kidneys and making the children kidneys, or the ‘kid’neys.

Overall, I loved working on these projects. The Kidney Donor Conversations team was fantastic to work with and I’m really happy with the final product we created. I look forward to creating more videos with them in 2024, diving into new topics surrounding kidney donation.