UNICEF (via RuralShores) · Child protection & community awareness
Stories That Protect
A child-protection awareness series for community screenings — Vyond storytelling with After Effects finishing.
- Role
- Multimedia developer — story, animation, finishing
- Year
- 2025
- Focus tool
- Vyond + After Effects
- Client
- UNICEF (via RuralShores)
- Toolchain
- VyondAfter EffectsIllustratorEleven LabsAuditionPremiere Pro
The problem
Child-protection messages fail when they lecture or frighten. Communities needed films that open a conversation adults are willing to have.
Megha's role
Story development, character design direction, Vyond animation, AE finishing.
The constraint
Sensitive subject, mixed-age audiences, projector screenings in daylight — every frame had to stay dignified and legible.
The outcome
A series built for facilitators: each film ends on a question, not a warning, with discussion cards to carry the session.
The hardest audience
These films screen in village gatherings — parents, elders, children in the same audience. The brief demanded stories that raise protection issues without shame, fear, or blame, and that leave a facilitator something to work with.
Setting
Community screenings, often outdoors on projectors, across program districts and partner geographies.
Tone
Dignity first. No villain caricatures, no frightened-child imagery, no lecture.
Story before message
Each film is one family's story with one decision point. The 'message' is never spoken — it's the ending the audience sees coming and wants. Writing meant workshopping story beats with the program team until the protection guidance was inseparable from the plot.
The series ends every film the same way: the screen holds on a question, and the film hands over to the room.
Scripting for a facilitator
Scripts were written with the screening in mind — pauses long enough to read the room, repetition where attention drifts, and a closing question tuned with facilitators. Voice tracks were produced in multiple languages with careful, neutral read direction.
Visual · Evening. Meera's family courtyard; a relative offers her a trip to the city for 'work'. Warm light, ordinary tone.
Audio · Natural dialogue, no music — the danger sounds like everyday kindness.
Visual · Meera hesitates at the doorway. The frame holds; the audience is given time to feel the doubt.
Audio · Ambient only. VO (soft): “Some offers ask questions we forget to ask out loud.”
Visual · Meera tells her teacher; the teacher and parents talk on the school steps. The circle of protective adults widens visually.
Audio · VO: “She didn't solve it alone. She wasn't supposed to.”
Visual · Hold on the family at dinner, safe. Fade to the closing question card.
Audio · VO: “If Meera lived in your lane — who would she tell?” Silence for the room.
Characters who keep their dignity
Character design carried the ethics: children are drawn capable, adults fallible but never monstrous. Silhouettes and costume were localized per screening region, with reference sheets ensuring the family stays recognizable across the series.
Meera
The child at the story's center — drawn confident, never victimized. Her yellow dupatta is the series' visual through-line.
Her parents
Loving, busy, imperfect — the audience must recognize themselves, not a cautionary tale.
The neighbourhood
Shopkeeper, teacher, anganwadi worker — the protective adults the films teach a community to activate.
Vyond for story, AE for weight
Vyond carried the narrative scenes — fast to iterate when story notes came. But emotional beats needed more than template motion: key scenes were finished in After Effects with color grading, vignettes, slow push-ins, and rain/light overlays that give the series its cinematic weight.
The split
Vyond: dialogue and action scenes. AE: openings, decision moments, closing questions.
Legibility
Graded for daylight projection — deep contrast, no detail that dies at low brightness.
Evening. Meera's family courtyard; a relative offers her a trip to the city for 'work'. Warm light, ordinary tone.
Meera hesitates at the doorway. The frame holds; the audience is given time to feel the doubt.
Meera tells her teacher; the teacher and parents talk on the school steps. The circle of protective adults widens visually.
Hold on the family at dinner, safe. Fade to the closing question card.
Reviewed like a policy, tested like a film
Protection specialists checked every beat against safeguarding guidance; field teams sanity-checked that scenes ring true. The most valuable notes were the quiet ones — a gesture that read differently in one region, softened in an afternoon.
Safeguarding review: one scene implied blame toward the family.
Re-staged the scene; camera stays with Meera's decision instead.
Facilitators: closing question too abstract for mixed audiences.
Rewrote to a concrete 'what would you do tonight?' framing.
Series approved for screenings with the facilitator kit.
Delivered projection cuts + discussion cards per language.
A screening kit, not just a file
Each film shipped with facilitator discussion cards and a projection-safe cut. The reserved player below will hold the public films once released.
Final film — link pending clearance
Screening films are pending public-release clearance. Slot reserved for the released series links.
Want the full story behind this project?
Megha can walk through the working files, review rounds and all.