Patient Journeys in Motion: Creative Direction for Sogroya’s Animated Stories
Authentic Stories & Thoughtful Design
How do you capture the emotions of real patients and caregivers while balancing creative freedom AND pharmaceutical regulations? That was the challenge we faced with the Sogroya animated patient stories. Over the course of this project, I wore many hats, from storyboard artist to creative director to character designer, ensuring each story felt genuine, visually engaging, and strategically sound. The result? Three animated videos that showcase real patient experiences, balancing heart and regulation.
Setting the Foundation: Concept, Vision, and Design Outcome
Our first step was establishing the creative direction. The old character designs we were leveraging had potential but needed a refresh to connect with our audience. I revamped the character proportions and aesthetics while developing moodboards to guide the overall tone.
The goal was to stay true to the patients' voices while keeping the visuals engaging and aligned with Sogroya’s brand identity.
Visual Revamp: I led the redesign of characters style guide to refine proportions and stylize while staying true to the legacy design’s essence.
Moodboard and Visual Direction: One cohesive moodboard set the tone for all three videos, ensuring consistency across the series.
Crafting the Story: Honest Narratives with Strategic Adjustments
Once the visual foundation was in place, we dove into storytelling. This wasn’t just a creative exercise, it required careful alignment with patient experiences and brand messaging while only having so much usable content to pull from. Still with all the splicing and editing we wanted each narrative to feel authentic, that was priority.
Some moments had to be adjusted since not everything patients shared could be included. Competitor comparisons or unapproved QOL claims had to be left out, so we leaned into genuine experiences and visual storytelling to fill in those gaps.
The heart of the story came from the patients and our job was to make sure their experiences were reflected truthfully, even within these boundaries.
Balancing Constraints: We worked closely with the brand team and copywriter to select meaningful moments that aligned with compliance.
Patient Stories: Activities like zip-lining and softball became key visual elements, reflecting the patients’ personalities.
Overseeing Animation: Bringing Stories to Life, Frame by Frame
With the narrative in place and with enthusiastic client buy in, the focus shifted to animation. I worked closely with the animation studio, providing feedback on every detail, from character movement, environment art to scene pacing.
Visual Oversight: I gave draw-overs and motion notes, ensuring the animation captured subtle emotions and storytelling beats.
Iterative Feedback: I managed multiple rounds of revisions, balancing client input, scenes in progress with regulation edits alongside the creative vision to keep everything aligned.
Character Design: Bringing Patients to Life through Thoughtful Redesigns
Designing the characters for the Sogroya animated videos was more than lifting the illustrations done beforehand. My goal was to capture the essence of each patient while refreshing the design language of the legacy Sogroya children illustrations.
To achieve this, I developed full turnarounds for each character, ensuring consistency across all angles. The models were built out with separate layers for each body part, making them easy to rig for animation. Some characters also required alternate outfits, which I integrated into the design process for smooth transitions across scenes.
I aimed for a design approach that felt modern and refined, but still lived comfortably within the universe of the original Sogroya kids.
Visually, the characters were simplified and stylized, focusing on lifelike elements through subtle design details. I used interior lines at contact points (such as elbows and knees) to emphasize movement and structure and overlap, when comped in the final video they will have applied gradient washes and hard-edge highlights to give the characters a sense of depth. The result is a refreshed character style that feels more cohesive and appealing buy still very much so Sogroya.
Concept Frames: Defining the Visual Touchstones for Background and Composition
To ensure consistency across the videos, I created three illustrated concept frames per video to provide the production team with a clear visual reference. These frames acted as reference pillars for the background design and scene composition, drawing from all previous reference materials, including inspiration boards and visual direction documents.
Each concept frame featured fully posed characters placed within their respective scenes, complete with gradient washes, lighting effects, and background treatments. My goal was to showcase how the final video should look and feel from the positioning of characters to the treatment between background elements and lighting. These frames served as blueprintshelping align everyone on the creative direction before animation began.
Managing Production Challenges and Problem-Solving on the Fly
No creative project comes without its challenges. During interviews, some kids were shy, making it tough to capture usable audio. Instead of forcing the narrative, we adapted by using playful visuals to reflect personalities. Visual storytelling became our best tool for those moments when the audio just didn’t work out and leaned into the candid nature of the casual adlib interviews.
Flexible Storytelling: For example, when Atticus became shy on recording day, we pivoted by focusing the narrative on visual elements, like scenes of zip-lining, to capture his personality.
Collaborative Problem-Solving: I worked in lock step with the copywriter to creatively rework audio clips into a cohesive story, balancing emotional authenticity with production constraints.
Final Delivery: Aligning Vision with Brand and Compliance
As the videos near completion, I remain closely involved in the final stages, ensuring the visual storytelling aligned seamlessly with both patient voices and brand goals. Stakeholders are and continue to be enthusiastic about how the videos playfully illustrate patients' experiences while effectively highlighting Sogroya’s benefits in a format that is unique to the growth hormone space.
Growth in Creative Leadership
This project stretched me across multiple disciplines, leading design, shaping narratives, and managing feedback loops. It reinforces my passion for creative direction, giving me hands-on experience balancing creative vision with real-world constraints and teams.
Outcome: Three animated videos that captured the heart of patient journeys while staying within regulation.
Lessons Learned: I sharpened my ability to adapt, collaborate, and manage complex, multidisciplinary projects from start to finish.
Let’s Create Something Meaningful Together
I love projects like this, and thrive where storytelling, design, and strategy intersect. If you’re looking for a creative lead who can bring a vision to life, balancing artistic expression with practical execution, I’d love to talk and explore what we can bring to life together.