Fauna & Flora International
What are Nurdles?
Challenge
Fauna & Flora International (FFI), a wildlife conservation charity, came to us looking to create an explainer animation outlining the catastrophic impacts of nurdle pollution on the environment. Nurdles are small pieces of plastic that are melted down to create items such as food wrappers, disposable plastic bottles and clothing.
Nurdles are increasingly being found in environments like oceans, rivers, streams and beaches. The oceans are especially vulnerable, with an estimated 11.5 trillion nurdles finding their way into the ocean yearly.
FFI focuses on preventing nurdles from entering the ocean in the first place, as once they reach the ocean, they are nearly impossible to remove.
Solution
We used mix media to create this animation and incorporated physical nurdles, using stop-motion techniques to show their scale and form. We animated the nurdles using the Dragon Frame software. The team enjoyed being physically hands-on while creating the stop-motion frames in the studio.
We used a mixture of 2d and 3d animation. As well as incorporating filmed footage provided by FFI, showing the devastating impacts of nurdles on marine wildlife and environments.
We hope this video is successful in helping FFI bring awareness to nurdle pollution; it has so far had over 4 million views (November 2022).
