About

We travelled to Sierra Leone to produce this animation about women’s rights for Christian Aid.

All animated in Flash, and based on true stories, it’s the emotional tale of a young village girl who gets sent to the city to live with her aunt. Full of hope for the future, she’s manipulated by those around her until she has no option but to run away, with devastating consequences.

The story was developed after working with a large group of young women from Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.  They told us, and in some cases performed, the events they’d been a part of in the struggle to live in Freetown.

The bold yet simple graphical style emerged as it was important not to relate these incidents to a wider community, rather than one specific girl, and so that judgements would be made based on the facts of the situation rather than personal details.  We were inspired by Saul Steinberg with his continuous use of line in his drawings, and turned that into an elegant way of moving between scenes whilst staying resolutely part of the same world.