My dear friend Oli Spies of Langbrett Skate and Surfshop asked me to get involved in their new project to do an important part in protecting our oceans.
Of course I was right away very interested, not just because of this important topic, but also to do something more profound than all this “nice and smiling illustrations” for commercial use.
So the background story in short: Microfibers released during the washing process of fleece and other artificial fabrics to a high percentage end up in our oceans. There they pollute and even poison marine life and accumulate again through the food chain coming back to us. Microfibers, even though being very tiny take a big hit at our environment and are already being found all around the globe.
Langbrett started to research and develop a special washing bag, called the “Guppy Friend washing bag”. This especially designed fabric is able to stop 99% of all fibers during the washing process, so they can be collected and disposed properly before they go into the waste water systems.
To fund this project they started a kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, and to explain this topic they needed an animated explanatory film. Here I came into play.
I wanted the look of the film being underwater, with some caustic effects, and lots of different fabrics, print-ons, patterns and patches, and of course: stitched typo. So I found a nice way to hijack a particle effect for adding stitches to the outlines of the fonts. Lights, caustic effects, a lot of particle emitters and animations really made my computer sweat.
To explain the problem of microfiber pollution on the accompanying pages i also provided some infographics.
Wanna learn more or even support them?
Support them here (kickstarter.com)
guppyfriend.com
langbrett.com