Animating Dr. Will Darling’s Wellness Workout

I’ve been animating the Wellness Workout series, and having done over half the presenters now I wanted to show a little behind the scenes of the process that goes into making them, and my thought process around it.

I begin with the storyboards which I make with reused assets to help save time, and create a layout for how I want the storyline of the video to play out. The formula always begins in a room, transitions to a peaceful wooded area, and comes back to the same room but brighter by the end. I do not make many notes apart from important ones such as certain phrases, as I feel meticulously planning out the dialogue usually leads to me either making certain shots too long or too short!

To avoid this issue I also create a thumbnail sheet, as seen here:

This is just all the storyboards laid out on on one page, and helps me to see if the whole animation flows nicely and makes sense together. Once that’s complete, I can take them over to Adobe Premiere and starting putting together the animatic, which is a rough cut of all the images stitched together in time. Here the work picks up as I can start actually animating and making things move.

Animating for the Wellness Workout is fun, as each one has a different vibe and exercise to it so I am always doing something different despite having the same main character in every one. Plus learning all these different ways to relax, destress, and support myself is also a nice bonus!

Be sure to have a listen to Dr Will Darling’s 5 minute interview, and give our brand new animation a watch on the official Wellness Workout website… https://thewellnessworkout.co.uk/2021/04/28/dr-will-baker/