Final Outcome/Evaluation

Above is my final animation showing the complete journey of the pomegranate in a lighthearted and simple style. Within this final piece I think I have successfully fulfilled the brief, in that I have created a strong animation which I think is successful in conveying my original group message of illustrating the long journey that the fruit takes and showing that the staff in the factory are the final step in this process. By showing the fruit falling and being caught just in time by an employee, I feel this enforces that idea and with this my aim is for it to make them feel not only more engaged with the process, but also like they have more responsibility for the fruit.

I feel like I have kept to a very simple and fun style, using bright colours and simple shapes to make it fun and uplifting for the viewer, although I think that the more serious tones can still shine through in parts, helping to reenforce the ideas that I want to convey and encouraging the staff to be more mindful of what they are wasting.

As an animation, I think it runs very well and I think for my first experience with it, I have been successful in making a strong piece. From a technical perspective, I think it does run slightly too fast in places and could do with being a bit smoother in some areas, and if I had had a longer timespan to work in I think I could’ve worked on these. I also would have liked to create multiple animations, depicting the journeys of various different fruits that come to the factory, and this is something I may work on in the future. Doing this helps to show that it is not just the pomegranate that is important, but all fruits that come to the factory are equally important and that none should be being wasted. For example the journey that the strawberry takes from over the road is just as important and meaningful as the journey that the pomegranate or the banana takes from the other side of the world. I feel like having more animations to run alongside this one would help to further convey my idea and to help encourage the staff to be mindful and conscious of the problem of waste in their factory.

Overall I have enjoyed the process of animating, I think it has been a successful experience and I think it works well to convey my idea. I feel that this final piece is a strong representation of our original group idea, although I think it is clear to see how it has developed from our concept into a real, finished outcome. I have enjoyed working on this brief and I think it has been a successful and educational experience. It has been interesting to learn about the PW company and how their factory works, and it had been an interesting project working to try and inspire others to be more mindful about the issue of waste. It has been a great chance to work on a live brief and it has been exciting to work on a live brief with a real client, and a real outcome in comparison to working on hypothetical briefs simply for university.

Making the Animation

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When making the animation, once I had started I found the process, although meticulous, very straightforward. I found that I picked up the software fairly easily and I managed to figure out the techniques quite easily. For example the process of Tweening to move a vector shape from one place to another and Easing to make that movement smoother and softer; as well as of course using frame by frame animation to move pieces of the scene slightly more in each frame. I used a 24fps speed; standard for most videos and animations. One thing I found slightly more difficult to get used to was getting the timing right and getting used to how long to drag scenes out for to make sure they weren’t over too quick.

Overall I found the experience fun and it was definitely a learning curve. As something that I have never done before I think I did fairly well to get it finished within the short timeframe. I am also happy to have picked up another skill with a new software, as I feel I now have a much more in depth understanding of how animation works, and how i could incorporate it into more of my own work. I am happy with the outcome and, from a technical perspective, I think it runs very well and very smoothly. I think I have utilised my research well by including the characterised fruit and elements of comedy to make the video more lighthearted and fun, as well as successfully conveying the serious message; educating about the long journey the fruit has taken and the responsibility I want the staff to have with it. I feel like I have also designed the transitions between scenes well, making them smooth and making them flow into each other rather than simply cutting between them. I think doing this has made the animation stronger as a whole as I feel like a smoother, more easy to watch animation is one that will easier for the audience to watch as well as making it easier for them to take in the message that I want to convey to them.

Where does the fruit come from?

As the main idea behind my animation was about illustrating how far this fruit has come and where it has come from, I decided to look at where it actually does come from. From the presentation given to us at the factory I know that pomegranates come from Chile, which is important as the animation I am creating is based around the pomegranate, but as some background research for the future animations that would be made to accompany this one I wanted to look at whereabouts the other various fruits originate.

Pomegranates – native to a region from Iran to northern India. Pomegranates have been cultivated throughout the Middle East, South Asia, and Mediterranean region for several millennia, and also thrive in the drier climates of California and Arizona.

Bananas – Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama. Most of the bananas you buy are grown within 20 degrees on either side of the equator.

Strawberries – in the summer strawberries at the factory are sourced from the farm right next to the factory

Melons – Melons originated in Africa and southwest Asia, but they gradually began to appear in Europe toward the end of the Roman Empire.

Final Group Presentation

Finally we presented our idea to the client. The main point we wanted to enforce when presenting the idea was about illustrating the journey the fruit takes to help educate the staff about how much time and care has been put in to getting the fruit to the factory. By doing this, in turn we wanted the staff to feel more involved and engaged with the process, reminded them that they are in fact the final step in the journey that this fruit has taken, and that it is their responsibility to get it to the consumer. This will hopefully make them more conscious not only of how much is being wasted, but of how much they are wasting individually and of how they can improve to waste less and save more.

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Design Development (Group Work)

After finalising our ideas about the theme and the format and design of our Haste, Not Waste campaign we moved on to actually creating some concept designs to back up our idea. We started with working on some colour scheme possibilities and mocking up a simple pomegranate character. We thought that turning the fruit into little characters with expressions and emotions would humanise them, making it easier for the staff to relate to the situation and to also play on the moral side of the idea, almost making the staff feel as though they need to save this fruit, and feeling guilty for not. As well as the pomegranate we also experimented with creating a melon and a strawberry to show that the idea would work and could be tailored to all different kinds of fruit.

We then moved on to look at ways in which we could introduce these designs into the factory; taking some go the photos of the blank spaces and walls and mocking up the characters there. In reality this could be possible with something like vinyl stickers or perhaps magnetic prints; something that could be easily wiped clean and wouldn’t cause the environment to become unclean.

After looking at these quick, print solutions we moved on to looking at our animation idea and began mocking up some digital versions of our original storyboards. We took a few of the frames we had sketched out and recreated them, referencing our colour schemes and creating a design that was as clean and simple as possible, using bold lines and colours and simple shapes to show our idea in a friendly and uplifting manor; aiming to keep the mood around the design as positive as possible to as to influence the staff in a good way. By doing this we hope to encourage them to want to make a change due to feeling a responsibility, rather than telling them to make a change because they have to.

First Thoughts (Group Work)

After the trip to the factory, we were split into groups with myself, and another student who visited the factory, as team leaders, tasked to feed back our experiences to the other students who didn’t go. In these groups we were tasked with coming up with a theme or message that we could potentially market to our client. We started the day with some simple divergent thinking tasks to get to know our group and to boost creativity, such as illustrating as many emotions we could think of that could be related to the thought of wasting fruit.

Eventually we began to discuss and brainstorm some ideas that we were having. Some of these included:

• Illustrating the value of the fruit through morals and responsibility, rather than costs and expenses
• Illustrating the long process that the fruit has gone through already before reaching the factory
• Suggestion boxes for improvements in the factory from staff points of view
• Portraying the fruit as a precious and beautiful object; something to be handled with care and compassion
• Potential reward schemes, for example any money saved from wasting less being put back into the staff
• Highlighting the importance of the workers; showing that they are the last step in this long process to make them feel more involved and part of a team
• Weekly/monthly newsletter or postcard that could be given to workers to show how much has been wasted/saved in the month; compared to last month and with possible goals for wasting less in the coming month

After discussions between our group there were a few ideas that stood out to us all as being more successful and interesting, and something we all liked the idea of working on. the main theme that seemed to stand out to us was the idea of the journey, and illustrating that long process to show how far the fruit has come, and how much effort has been out in to getting this fruit to the factory. We thought that taking this approach would be successful in encouraging the workers to waste less, and also to be conscious of how much they are wasting, whereby showing them the long process would help to make them feel more responsible for protecting this fruit. We wanted to make the staff feel involved and responsible for getting this fruit to the customer, showing them that they are the very last step in a very long process, and for them to waste something that has come such a long way is something that can’t happen.

We felt that we needed to have a slogan to run alongside our idea, and to tie everything together, making it feel more like a campaign that could continue to run. And so after discussing a few between us that could be used, a member of the group suggested ‘Haste, Not Waste’. This was the most successful one, as we felt the simplicity and the rhyme of it worked well and would be strong. It is short as well which makes it easier to get stuck in someones head from even a quick glance. Being short and simple, it could also be easily translated into other languages spoken by the staff members in the factory, for the purpose of posters of any printed material.

After refining our idea, we moved on to start thinking about how we could convey it and what techniques and formats we could use. In our discussions we agreed that we wanted to keep the feel of the idea quite lighthearted and uplifting, aiming to keep the mood in the factory higher rather than lower. As a way to show our theme in a fun and slightly more interactive way than simply making a poster, we decided that we could utilise the out of use TV screens that were dotted about in the factory by making a simple animation. This piece could work with or without sound, could be played in intervals or on repeat, and could be a nice piece to show to new staff as well as having on in the background of the factory as a subtle reminder to keep conscious of waste.We moved on to draft up a simple storyboard for our animation. The story would show the fruit being planted in a warm country, and then taking months to grow (hence the calendar sketch). After months passing the fruit would be fully grown and hop off of the tree, beginning its long journey around the world. Upon finally reaching the factory, we would show the fruit on a conveyor, about to fall to its ‘death’ and be wasted, before being caught by a responsible and heroic staff member, saving the fruit and reducing waste.

We wanted to use a quite simple style and bright colour scheme, to keep the animation light hearted and uplifting, whilst containing some quite deep and meaningful themes. We also chose to work with a pomegranate to begin with, as this was the story that personally stuck with me the most and was one of the fruits that took the longest to grow. This animation of course could and would be made with other fruits. An animation could be made alongside this for a number of fruits prepared at the factory to run as a series that they use, for fruits like bananas, mangos, melons, apples and even strawberries that, in summer, are grown right next to the PW factory.

My Group:
Will Merritt
Laura Tooth
Sam Byiers
Nicole Broad
Emily Wickens
James Court
Sarah Bond

PW: Factory Visit

As a way to gather more research for the project and to gain more understanding of how the factory actually works, what the working conditions are like, and how waste is actually produced, a group of us were invited to tour the fruit preparing factory. On the visit we were shown first hand how the pre-made fruit pots that we see in supermarkets are prepared. The experience was very eye opening, and it was very interesting to see how it is all done. It was also very apparent how strict the standards that they work to are, whereby we saw perfectly edible pieces of fruit discarded because they were a slightly different colour or a slightly different shape. This was also easy to see when it came to hygiene. Before even entering the factory there was a very strict sterilisation routine which included not allowing shoes to touch the floor without protectors on, hair (and beard) nets, overcoats and washing hands (and gloves) multiple times.

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Upon arriving we were given a presentation in room that seemed more homely than expected from a factory ( we later discovered that the entire site is built around an old country home). In the presentation we were shown information about the fruit that is processed, how much comes through everyday, where the fruit comes from and also how much is wasted. Some of the important statistics included:

• 150-300,000 pots are made everyday
• In May, £53,000 worth wasted in one week
• £35,000,000 is spent on fruit every year
• It takes 6 weeks for pomegranates to travel from Chile to the factory
• £150,000 spent each year removing waste
• £15,644,797 worth wasted in a year

We were shown some examples of some of a presentation made to the factory staff to make them aware of the issue of waste, in which examples of expensive items such as supercars and houses in Cornwall were shown as equivalents to the amount of money being lost due to food waste. Whilst understanding that this was meant as an eye opener and an incentive to waste less, I don’t personally feel that this approach has a very strong impact, especially on a staff member who is unlikely to see very much of this money that could be saved with less wastage.

Personally, one of the things that struck me most when discussing this issue at the factory was a fact about pomegranates. Like much of the fruit in the factory, it is usually grown in places all around the world, and for example, the pomegranate takes 6 months to grow and then another 6 weeks to be shipped around the world to the factory. When thinking about that time, the distance the pomegranate has travelled, and the amount of input from other people all around the world; if the fruit arrives at the factory just to be dropped on the floor and thrown away, then that strikes me as unacceptable. That pomegranate has been completely wasted for no reason, and that story had a much deeper, more meaningful impact than simply learning about the costs and statistics.

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Walking around the factory floor itself was very interesting, and personally quite eye-opening, in that it helped me to realise how much effort is actually put into creating these small pots of fruit that the majority of customers wouldn’t even give a thought to. It was interesting to see the fruit coming in and coming through the entire process from trimming to cutting to packaging, and even the small things in between like running under a UV light to kill bacteria, and coming through a metal detector before being loaded up onto trucks to be delivered. One thing that I noticed was how much empty space there was on all of the walls. Whilst I understand that this is an extremely hygienic place, there could well be possibility for some sort of decoration or graphic to be put there. I also noticed TV screens in some of the rooms that were switched off, but could easily be used to show moving images or some sort of digital or animated graphics.

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The overall feel of the factory was quite dull; the factory obviously is very cold and wet to keep the fruit fresh and to keep the areas clean. This is of course a fairly unpleasant environment to have to spend 8 hours in, and is somewhere that you could easily find your mood lowered. Due to this, I feel like whatever design were to be introduced to the area, I think it would be most successful if it were light hearted or attempted to raise the mood/morale of the environment, rather than to add to it.

Overall I personally found the trip to the PW factory extremely helpful as it has given me much more understanding on how the process works and exactly how much effort is put into the process. I feel like I have also come out with a much greater appreciation of the fruit that they use, and with almost a social responsibility to create something that can successfully encourage staff there to waste less fruit.

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Fruit Project APP

PW is an organisation based in Kent who specialise in preparing selections of fruit for almost all supermarkets in the UK, as well as a range of other customers. Established in 2012, they use a wide range of fruits imported from all over the world to prepare, package and send to the customers.

The customers that PW cater to have varying standards on how the fruit should be prepared, all of which are very very high. As a result of this a shocking £6 million worth of fruit is wasted each year in the factory, due to droppings, damage etc. by the staff who trim, chop, peel and package the product every day.

In an attempt to try to massively reduce this wastage, we have been approached with a brief to generate some design work to make the workers aware of the cost that this is causing, and to encourage them to be more mindful about it and to, in turn, waste less when working on the factory floor.