The Rebuilding Macon Volunteer Orientation Project is a series of animated micro-learning videos and supplemental posters designed to train volunteers ages 15 – 25 in the basics of work-site safety and effective house painting procedures. All four complete animated videos can be viewed below. Immediately following is a complete case study of the project giving a detailed outline of the project with examples of storyboards, artwork and other visual materials not seen in the finished videos.
Video #1 is a short introduction of the organization, the purpose of the training and of course the characters bringing it to them.
Video #2 covers work-site safety
Video #3 covers effective house painting procedure and minimizing work-site mess.
Video #4 covers positive interpersonal engagement with other volunteers and the homeowner.
Case Study: “Rebuilding Macon Volunteer Orientation Project”
Tools Used: Adobe Animate CC, After Effects, Audition and Microsoft PowerPoint
Client: Rebuilding Macon Inc. – Not-for-profit organization located in Macon, Georgia
A Summary of the Project and the Challenge that Brought it On.
The Rebuilding Macon Volunteer Orientation Project is a series of animated micro-learning videos and supplemental posters designed to train volunteers ages 15 – 25 in the basics of work-site safety and effective house painting procedures. The materials were created using Adobe Animate CC, After Effects, Audition and Microsoft PowerPoint.
Rebuilding Macon serves low-income, elderly and disabled homeowners by providing much needed house repair and rehabilitation free of charge. They partner with thousands of volunteers every year from throughout the U.S., and many of these volunteer teams are youth groups and college student organizations.
The challenge I was given was to develop an effective means of bringing the less experienced volunteers up to speed on worksite safety and proper painting technique. The training needed to be especially engaging due to the age of the volunteers. It would also need to be accessible outside of Rebuilding Macon’s facilities, since the volunteers had to be worksite ready on the day they arrived.
The Solution and How We Got There
Part 1 – The Goal Is Set
The stake holders at Rebuilding Macon wanted three themes covered in the materials. They are:
“Be Safe” – covering worksite safety.
“Make It The Best” – covering effective house painting procedure and minimizing worksite mess.
“Have Fun” – covering positive interpersonal engagement with other volunteers and the homeowner.
With most volunteer teams there is little to no time for onsite training, so it was decided that microlearning videos would be the best solution. The videos could be viewed in a group meeting before departure to Macon or viewed individually on phones, tablets or computers. This solution would also allow volunteers to review any of the short training segments on a phone while on the worksite if needed.
The videos would also need to be entertaining in order to effectively engage the younger audience and to encourage them to review the materials onsite. To do this we chose story based, character-driven humor and animation as the means of delivering the otherwise dry information.
Part 2 – The Steps Taken
Research
The research was the most collaborative part of the process between myself and the Rebuilding Macon stakeholders. They gave a significant amount of information on things such as painting tips and ladder safety. I then did my own research through the materials and websites of various professional painting organizations and companies. From there we compiled the information, working it into the most relevant aspects and making it as concise as possible.
I’ll add that during this part I make a habit of looking for creative insights that might come out of the material itself. These can come in a variety of forms such as possible moments of humor, story angles or inspirational ideas.
Writing
Building on the three themes supplied by the stakeholders along with the technical information we agreed upon, I brainstormed ideas of how to deliver serious information in a fun, humorous and memorable way. After boiling it down to the strongest concepts we met again and discussed what the stakeholders liked and disliked about each idea.
The final concept came down to having a main emcee character (a talking paintbrush) who would deliver the technical information. Along the way he would be interrupted by three individuals who had been rejected as emcees. These “rejects” were built off of character types from popular culture that would be well known to younger audiences: a blustering orc from multiplayer fantasy games; a gung-ho robotic suit character prominent in Japanese sci-fi animation; and a wanna-be rap artist/DJ. Each theme would have its own short video and a different “reject” would interrupt one video a piece.
Along with the three theme scripts I wrote a short introduction video that presented the characters along with the reasons the videos were created. During the writing process I kept three priorities in front of me – clarity, pace and entertainment value.
With a few revisions the scripts were approved by the Rebuilding Macon team.
Storyboards
Next, I created sets of quick, rough storyboards to visualize and test for layout problems in the scripts. Once I was satisfied, I created more refined black and white drawings and loaded them into PowerPoint along with the script as captions. These were presented to Rebuilding Macon for approval.
Voice Acting and Soundtrack
Since this project was for a charity organization, I made use of my contacts at Lagrange College in the Theater Program and Audio Production Program. We put out an audition call and several quality student actors tried out. I led the auditions and was able to choose actors that best fit my vision of each character. We set up a recording session in the studios at the college using student sound engineers recommended by the department director. All this cost nothing for Rebuilding Macon and the students gained quality work for their portfolios.
Using Adobe Audition I edited the voice tracks into a soundtrack paced for humor and clarity supplemented by quality music I selected from my membership with Envato Music Library.
Animatic
Using the refined storyboards and the edited soundtracks I used Adobe After Effects to create animatics for all four videos. Rebuilding Macon test-screened these with youth and college groups. Based on their responses some small issues were addressed and changes made before committing to the final steps of Art Direction and Animation. Here is a segment from one of those animatics.
Art Direction
During this part of the process I established the design of the characters along with the style of props and backgrounds. They were created in Adobe Animate CC. Once approved I made full Animation ‘Rigs” for the characters in order to streamline the animation process. A “rig” is just making a full range of mouth, eye and limb variations for a character that can be used over and over, eliminating the need for redrawing the character hundreds of times.
Poses and Expressions 
Model Sheet 
Style Sheet
Animation
The animation process was streamlined as much as possible using the powerful tools in Adobe Animate CC. With four videos making up almost 22 minutes of animation the process had to run smoothly in order for me to meet my deadline. Videos were broken down into individual shots and those shots broken down into individual character performances. They were all logically labeled and cataloged for ease in the editing process.
Editing
Using Adobe After Effects I brought the soundtrack and finished animation together. Transitions, camera moves and effects were added to enhance the pace and storytelling of the videos.
The videos were delivered to Rebuilding Macon who then sent links to upcoming groups prior to their time in Macon.
Posters
Using the artwork and text from scripts, I created a series of PDF posters that Rebuilding Macon printed and laminated. These are posted at each worksite to serve as reinforcement and reminders of the more technical information given in the videos. The posters were designed to catch attention from a distance, drawing the volunteer closer. The mere action of moving toward the poster helps to insure they will be more engaged with the material once close enough to read it.
Part 3 – Assessing Our Effectiveness
The training is brand new, but we’ve been able to implement it with an initial group. A missions organization brought in approximately 200 teenagers within 12 church youth teams. This organization has been bringing teams for the last four summers from all over the southeast.
Because of the last-minute timing of implementation, the assessment took shape as informal onsite discussions between the Rebuilding Macon director and individual team leaders. Here is the general results of what she found out.
- Every team leader believed the video training was a positive addition to the Rebuilding Macon program.
- Most leaders believed it made a significant difference in how quickly student volunteers approached the work. Some of the comments said the teenagers, especially the less experienced ones, took on a more “mature” or “professional” attitude toward the work than the leader expected.
- Generally, leaders who have brought teams before felt they had to spend less time and effort getting their teenagers to show care in the home they were working on. Messes seemed far less frequent than previous years.
- While specific data has not been kept on past work-site injuries (in order to do a more statistical comparison), there was a strong belief from the team leaders and the Rebuilding Macon director that the overall safety of this group was better.
- The videos were distributed to teams by online link before they left for Macon, so most of the volunteers were able to view them before arriving. As a reinforcement, the missions organization showed all four videos again to the group as a whole the evening they arrived. Comments revealed that the videos were well received for their entertainment value (lots of laughter). They also helped to instill a sense of community and common cause in the large group.
- In a few instances team leaders and volunteers viewed video #3 (the painting video) on their phone while onsite.
- The posters were generally successful as reinforcement. They also opened conversations between teenagers about the characters in the videos. While not specifically about the technical content these conversations can only be seen as positive reactions to the training.
Part 4 – The Hard Parts of Making It Happen
This project was initiated in early January of 2019. We set a deadline of June 10 in order to provide the training for the influx of summer youth groups that were scheduled. Since I took on this project as a volunteer, I had to fit it in between teaching and other freelance work. Therefore, finding the time to work on it and making sure that the time was used as efficiently as possible was my major challenge.
The key to overcoming this challenge was focusing on the quick iterations of script, storyboards and animatics. By working and reworking the project in these forms we made sure we were hitting our marks before the more time-intensive and expensive work of art direction and animation came into play.
Another challenge was making sure we found the right balance of humor, creativity and clarity of information. The humor had to appeal to the younger audience without particularly offending older group leaders. It had to carry the narrative without overshadowing the technical content.
We met this challenge by exposing the early iterations to young and old alike and listening carefully and honestly to their feedback. Then we weighed what we received , made changes we believed valid and moved on.