Brief Explanation

Told through delightful hand-illustrated paper puppets, "How A Share Can Save Lives" tells of the Singapore Red Cross' challenge in fulfilling the blood needs of the country's 5 million population when only less than 2 percent donate blood. We follow a young boy as he, like many of Singapore's teens, learns about the problems faced and what they can do to help - and how the simple act of sharing a single message from his mobile phone can save up to three lives.

Creative Execution

We knew from the start that we wanted to create a sense of urgency without resorting to the melodrama or scare-tactics typical of this subject matter. We also wanted the film to have a child-like honesty in it’s look and tone. After a bout of experimentation, we decided to present our story in the form of a children’s paper puppet show. Following through with the paper craft concept, we elected to create almost all the elements painstakingly by hand. To start off, blocks of colour would first be painted in Photoshop. These would then be printed out and gone over with a variety of pencils, coloured markers and paint to complete the illustration. Finally, the physical elements would be distressed for texture before finally being digitized for animation. We realized the way the elements moved was key to selling the illusion of a live-action puppet show. To achieve that effect, the scenes were first rehearsed and performed against a mock set and captured on video. The information gleaned from the tracking markers would then be applied to the digitized assets in the computer. Even the lighting in the virtual set was referenced from the physical one. This way, while retaining the feel of a live performance (with all its quirks and imperfections), we could still take advantage of the digital process to add flourishes that a traditional puppet show could never achieve.