11 Educational Animations for the American Chemical Society
Project Goal
Create eleven short, scientifically-accurate educational 3D animations depicting chemical and physical processes on a molecular level.
Flavin in basic solution
Dissolution of sucrose
Evaporation of alcohol
Program Manager
Sodium polyacrylate in water
Intercalation of iodine in starch
Polymerization of sodium alginate
The Process
Animation type:
High-End 3D + 2D
Project timline:
6 weeks
Review:
1 zoom call + 5 e-mail feedback sessions
Find out which of our 26 scientific animation options works best for investor relations and communications:
This project was particularly challenging because we had 6 weeks to produce 10 complex scientific animations — less than half our usual 10-12 week production timeline for projects of similar complexity. To expedite the production process, we took a unique approach by beginning molecular simulations and visual style development in parallel immediately after the script was complete, deviating from the typical waterfall production scheme. This expedited approach required close collaboration with the client and a high time commitment and review pace from them. While our standard 7-step waterfall production process, including 4 review steps, is preferred for most projects due to its time-saving benefits, for projects with extremely tight deadlines, we can apply this expedited approach to reduce the overall production time by 3-5 weeks. We would like to extend our gratitude to Blake Aronson for their collaboration, as our communication was highly effective and focused on achieving the desired outcome.
Additionally, we were able to expedite the production by optimizing the lookdev and style development step. Since all 10 animations were part of the same educational project, we developed and approved a style for one animation and applied it to all the others. This optimization approach can also benefit other client projects requiring multiple animations — later animations ordered by the same client with the same style do not require the lookdev and style development step, allowing Visual Science to offer a significant discount.
Why did we use this
animation type?
This project required a high level of scientific accuracy, so we applied our most advanced animation type: High-End 3D. We created 3D assets capable of reconstructing crystal lattice models using data from crystallographic databases. The Visual Science team boasts both computational biology experts and PhD-qualified colleagues specializing in various fields of chemistry.
The High-End animation type, based on scientifically accurate simulations, is unique in the scientific animation space, and Visual Science is the only company with such expertise in-house.
We are honored that reputable organizations like the American Chemical Society rely on our proficiency. For all of our high-end animations, we developed a single visualization style using standard CPK coloring. To ensure the processes we visualized are clear and comprehensive, we incorporated 2D elements and freeze-frames into the animations, supporting scientific content development services for educational science projects.
