I had the pleasure to work with TED's Science Curator and author at Scientific American, David Biello. This explainer video is an introduction to David’s book, “The Unnatural World”. It lays out our humanity’s situation in the Anthropocene, installs a sense of urgency and awareness of what we have done to alter our planet, and inspires us to take action to ensure our planet’s habitability.

Welcome to the Anthropocene:

Client: TED-Ed

Direction, Design & Animation: Margaret To

Script: David Biello

Music & Sound Design: Wonder Boy Audio

Storyboarding.

It was a lot of fun to doing research and learning about Earth’s history (and learning how a glyptodon looked like!). I worked closely with David and the TED-Ed team through the storyboarding process, making sure the story flowed and the visuals were an accurate portrayal of the environment and animals in the prehistoric era.

Horizontal and vertical pans were used as transitions throughout the video - as a playful way to make viewers feel like they are moving through a giant storybook.

Visual Style.

The concept of nature, science, and time is prominent throughout geology. Nature is represented by the contrast in scale to evoke nature’s vastness and power. The angular, geometric shapes resonates with the order yet dynamic study of science. Lastly, geology is the study of the earth’s history, and we are studying history in hopes of creating a better future. The concept of “time” is represented through the overall futuristic and modern look, that we are looking into bettering the future. See below for the style frames:

This video is now part of TED-Ed’s “Our Changing Climate” video series and has helped answered 17,000+ questions from students through TED-Ed’s lesson page. Being able to spark discussions and educate viewers on sustainability was the biggest reward from this project.