Clarity, light and curiosity turning the internet's hidden highways into a planet-sized sensor network.
Client: National Physical Laboratory (NPL)
The cables carrying our messages across the ocean could also help us understand what’s happening beneath it. That’s the idea at the heart of our latest animation for the NPL.
Our brief was to explain a complex piece of science to a broad audience: how subsea fibre optic cables could help fill the gaps in offshore earthquake monitoring, with the potential to support earthquake and tsunami early warning.
The challenge was one of scale as much as science. How do you take viewers from the movements of an entire planet to tiny changes in light travelling through a strand of glass - and make that journey feel natural?
We built the film around that shift in perspective, moving from the Earth and its oceans into the fibre itself. Clear visual storytelling helps explain how ultra-stable interferometry detects those minute changes, giving viewers a way into the technology without needing a background in physics.
It’s a fascinating example of finding a new purpose for something already in place: turning the infrastructure that connects us into a tool that could help protect us.
Credits:
Design & Direction: Simon Armstrong
Services:
- Concept Development
- Design
- Storyboarding
- Animation
- Audio
- Scripting with client
Drawing Out the Science...
"The challenge was to make complex science clear while keeping viewers oriented as we moved between very different scales.
We built a flat 3D map with a rippling polygonal ocean that could wrap into a globe. This let us move fluidly from beneath the waves to overhead maps and out to the whole planet, all within a single continuous shot where needed.
Those transitions connect each detail to the bigger picture, helping the audience follow where they are, what’s happening and how it all fits together. A bold teal and coral palette gives the film a distinctive graphic feel, while simple visual cues make the science easier to grasp."
Simon Armstrong
Creative Director
