REBEL GIRLS | BRAND A slick animation on the story of Margaret Hamilton

“Nucco brought our vision together in such a short amount of time. Our team gave them our big idea and they ran with it, providing us truly high quality content. We were able to sit back and enjoy the process of our vision come to life.”
– Giulia Flamini, Art Director, Rebel Girls/Timbuktu Labs

As a visual storytelling agency, we often get to help organisations tell good stories – and sometimes we get to help tell important ones. This project ticked both boxes.

Background
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the successful Apollo 11 mission to the moon, Rebel Girls approached us with an offer we couldn’t refuse – to tell the story of women’s involvement in the space programme. It was more than a good story – it was an opportunity to beat the drum for some of the incredible women who have made important contributions in science exploration.

Our Work
Adapting the script from one of Rebel Girls’ gripping podcasts, we developed a slick, two and a half minute animation on the story of Margaret Hamilton. An integral part of the Apollo 11 mission, Margaret wrote a lot of the code used for the onboard computers responsible for guiding the astronauts to the moon and back safely. In fact, there’s a well-known photograph of Margaret beside a printout of the code she wrote – and it’s taller than she is. 

Developing The Look and Feel
Working within the style guidelines proposed by the client, we developed a range of concepts and mood-boards for the client to mix and match from, allowing them to combine approaches for a distinct aesthetic based on their brand colours.

Using Frame-By-Frame Animation
From a creative point of view, this was a fantastic opportunity to work in frame-by-frame animation. Particularly suited to character-based subjects, frame-by-frame animation is a rich style in which each frame is hand-drawn, allowing for more inventive movements and realistic expressions.

This style of animation allowed our animators to flex creatively, working together using the vector-based software CC Animate (based on Flash) for a slick final effect.With the human subject, it was the ideal style to bring Margaret’s character to life.

The Results
The result was an animation that didn’t just communicate an important story – but was visually stunning as well – leading to over 11,000 views on Instagram!​​​​​​​