Focus on the fun

When making something so emotionally charged as an animation for a children's hospice charity, it seems to be really important to be able to acknowledge the full range of human emotions. This film needs to be empathetic, but in doing so I need to be able to find the fun. Claire House is a place for families and children to feel safe and supported and receive care, but also a place to embrace the joys of childhood and parenthood, however fleeting it may be.

Being an animation student, I regularly find myself having been sat hunched over a lightbox for long periods of time and needing to get up and move. When this happens I normally refer to it as the need for a "30 second dance party", and a few months ago I decided to capture it in animated form.
This is the kind of thing that I need to focus on with the family I am assigned to; their quirks and jokes, their ways of finding the joy in the small moments shared together, all their little ways of being human and happy and together, because Claire House doesn't have a one-size fits all approach to their work, and neither do I. I want to make this as much about the family themselves as about the work Claire House do.