New York-based visual communications company the STUDIO is helping to launch a new children’s cancer foundation with the below powerful animated short.

Inspired by the story of Scarlett Aida Rivero Osejo, a 5-year-old survivor of bone cancer who lives with a prosthetic leg, the Scarlett Contra el Cancer foundation helps young cancer victims and their families, with a focus on amputees. The STUDIO became involved when friends connected to the organization challenged President and Chief Creative Officer Mary Nittolo to address the fact that “there was an alarming lack of words, books, music and anything that they could show Scarlett,” Nittolo said. “There was nothing that could comfort them.”

The urge to help increased when Nittolo’s team realized the full extent of what children with cancer endure.

“Many kids die just because they don’t have access to proper care,” Nittolo said. “Children are treated with the same course of chemotherapy as adults because nobody develops child cancer drugs because they’re not seen as being profitable enough.”

What’s more, only 4% of government funding for cancer goes to victims who are kids.

“When we started to find out about it,” Nittolo continued, “there were some terrible things that made us realize this is a really underserved community.”

So the STUDIO set about producing a pro bono public service announcement for Scarlett Contra in the thick of its usual busy slate of commercial work on brands ranging from Turner to MTV. Early iterations of the video pictured Scarlett as something of a superhero, capable of overcoming all obstacles presented by her condition to play soccer and do other activities like nothing had ever happened. But Nittolo decided the story needed to be told a different way, “because I didn’t want children who didn’t have that amazing trajectory of repair to feel like something was wrong with them,” she said. “So we just wanted to make it about the one thing, which was the dancing, the one thing she had to overcome. But we wanted to tell an inside story too—what she feels existentially.”

Aiming to depict an “interior dialogue that was threatening to overcome” Scarlett, the STUDIO created a parallel narrative to the temporal action that resembles “something that is somewhere between pictorial realism and abstraction,” Nittolo said.

The moments within this psychological realm resemble moving paintings, as red concentric lines angrily surround a vibrant blue speck, threatening to engulf it. The look and feel was inspired in part by the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, who used pure color and texture to convey emotion. Originally, the interior sequences were “almost like an Inside Out thing, where the blue dot had eyes and it was more personified,” said Nitollo. “I felt it should be more subtle and kind of more like Scarlett’s metal landscape, the claustrophobia she’s feeling.”

Meanwhile, Scarlett’s real-world narrative was created using Maya for the 3D character animation with digitally hand-painted 2D backgrounds by Alison Abitbol, who also directed the video. This mixed-media approach made it easier for the team to add nuance to Scarlett’s emotional life.

“We wanted to feel her thinking at all times,” Nitollo said, crediting one of the STUDIO’s biggest inspirations to a photo of Scarlett in which it “was almost like childhood was gone from her,” she continued. “I’ve subsequently seen pictures of her looking completely excited and happy and she’s loving being a kid, but there was this one picture of her in which the sadness on her face was just so mature, and that was kind of what guided me through this whole thing—that there was really a loss of innocence in all of this.”

Driving that feeling home, Scarlett’s soundtrack features an original song composed by the music collective Hook & Line and sung by Abby Diamond, a partner in the company. Diamond happened to be freelancing as a music producer for the STUDIO on unrelated works when the Scarlett project came in. As a result, “she was here for a lot of the meetings, so she was really able to get inside of the project,” Nittolo said, “as opposed to just coming in for like one day and then getting a brief and going away.”

What ensued from this access is a track of impeccable quality that feels unusually well-matched to the content.

“It was very fortuitous,” Nittolo continued. “I didn’t bring Abby here for Scarlett but it ended up being amazing that she was here.”

The day the video was completed was the same day Scarlett Contra el Cancer received its 501(c)(3) status, a milestone for any legitimate nonprofit. To date, the Scarlett video has been instrumental to the organization’s awareness campaign, but Nittolo envisions another promotional push toward fundraising as well. Production left the STUDIO with unused assets that might be used for a Scarlett-related e-book or other new element going forward. Already, scenes from the video have been converted to blank line art and sent to kids as a digital coloring book.

“It’s been incredible some of the comments people have made,” Nittolo said. “‘This is the story of my life…’ ‘How did you know…?’ This is why artists work. It epitomizes the privilege of being an artist – that you can use your talents to give voice to an entire community.”

Creative Credits:

Client: Scarlett Contra el Cancer

Project: “Scarlett” animated short

Production/Animation/Design: the STUDIO, New York

Director: Alison Abitbol

Creative Director/Executive Producer: Mary Nittolo

Producer: Jenna Gabriel

Art Direction: Alison Abitbol, John Holmes, Juan Mont

Early Concept Development: Mike Ocasio, John Holmes

Narrative: Paolo Cogliati, Alison Abitbol

Modeling: Juan Mont

Animation (Red and Blue World): Juan Mont, Adam Rozanski, Victor DeRespinis

Character Animation and Compositing: Juan Mont, Hee Jin Kim, Mike Sime, Ozan Basaldi, Jackie Garbuio, Eric Kilanski, Adam Rozanski, Victor DeRespinis

Matte Paintings: Alison Abitbol

Rigging: Malcolm Carrott

Lighting: Mirelle Underwood

Editing: Jackie Garbuio, Malcolm Carrott, Adam Rozanski

Character Development: Alison Abitbol, Mike Ocasio, John Holmes, Adrian Mateescu, Juan Mont

Special thanks to: Grace Ramirez, Antonio Navas, Solange Rivero and, of course, Scarlett.

Music: Hook+Line, New York/Los Angeles

Partner/Creative Director: Bryan Senti

Partner/Co-writer/Vocalist: Abby Diamond

Co-writer/Producer: Kyle Patrick

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