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NewPoint Strategies and Pixeldust joined forces to relaunch the “Who Does That?” workplace training videos. Designed for millennials, these animated videos are engaging, fun, and relevant to today’s generation of workers.

BRIEF

NewPoint Strategies offers consulting and training for workplace issues such as diversity, equity, inclusion, and sexual harassment. Although the preexisting videos included the overall message on how to address these difficult issues in the workplace, this partnership between Newpoint and Pixeldust created an opportunity for the videos to be taken to the next level. Pixeldust sought to design a new style of animation that would be more appealing to a younger workforce. NewPoint presented two initial concepts for pilot episodes for a new marketing campaign, one which focuses on sexual harassment, and another which targets the issue of ethnic stereotyping.

EXECUTION

The Pixeldust team went to work on contemporary scripts that used relevant lingo and natural dialogue. Pixeldust wanted the scripts to be engaging, yet short enough to keep the audience’s attention until the end. The next step was to create a brand new style of characters for the pilot episodes – Pixeldust’s illustrators sought out popular animated tv shows for inspiration.

 

CHARACTERS

Pixeldust’s illustrators designed numerous options for each character, including a variety in age, body types, and clothing style. Once Pixeldust and Newpoint agreed on a specific look for each character, the artists added color and began preparing them for animation.

initial sketches of characters for the newpoint training videos
Initial designs for the African American female character
initial sketches of characters for the newpoint training videos
Initial designs for the Hispanic male character
before and after of characters for the newpoint training videosbefore and after of characters for the newpoint training videos
before and after of characters for the newpoint training videosbefore and after of characters for the newpoint training videos

ANIMATION

Characters were designed to look relatable, and to represent the wide variety of ethnicity found in the workplace. As a dialogue driven series, careful attention was paid to facial expression and body language when conveying certain sensitive topics.

COACHES

The initial concept was to demonstrate the situation using animated characters, then transition to live action footage of a coach offering advice to the audience. However, the team felt that using footage was too limiting and that animating both the scenario and the coach would give more consistency from front-to-back. This also allowed for a wider selection of voice talent since they were no longer restricted to actors close by who needed to come to the studio for the video recording.

PROMO VIDEO

This promo video for the series demonstrates how the animated training videos can help a company or agency create a culture of respect and a safe place to work, regardless of an employee’s gender, racial group, or ethnicity. The “Who Does That?” video series will soon be available for companies of all sizes looking to equip their employees with the training needed to address common workplace issues such as diversity, equity, inclusion, and sexual harassment.