A Plymouth animation and video production company run by a husband-and-wife team has been chosen to create 3D animated content for the first Government-approved and globally-recognised industry beauty qualification.
Pushed, run by former ITV staffers Dave and Karen Meadows, has created four hours of e-learning material, the equivalent of two feature films worth of animated content designed to become the beauty industry’s gold standard for nail technician training and qualifications.
The Nail Knowledge training course, devised by Professional Animated Learning, consists of three masterclasses with 16 lessons and a total of nearly six hours of interactive e-learning.
The content was written by three of the nail industry’s biggest names: Marian Newman, Doug Schoon, inventor of Shellac, and Vitaly Solomonoff.
In its first week alone, more than 100 industry professionals took and passed the diploma. Interest in the new courses continues to be positive and is expected to reach several thousand per month globally.
The content was condensed into three masterclasses covering the major sectors of the industry: Nail Structure, Product Chemistry, and Health and Safety.
Alongside the animated content, the lessons were designed to include interactive quizzes to test and assess the learners before they move onto the next stage.
Pushed is known in the animation industry for creating animated opening titles for a variety of popular TV cooking shows including Rick Stein and James Martin.
Mr and Mrs Meadows, who both worked for ITV Westcountry, set up their production company to create animation and video content using a wide variety of animation styles, such as 2D, 3D, hand-drawn and stop-motion.
They employ three experienced graphic designers and have offices in Plympton, in Plymouth, and Southampton.
Pushed has worked for firms and organisations including ITV, the National Trust, Brittany Ferries, Fairway Furniture, Imperial College London, Sky, English Heritage and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
“We chose Pushed for the project because they offered all the services, we needed under one company, including project management, copywriting, design and animation,” said Marian Newman, leading nail industry expert who was awarded the BEM for services to the beauty industry during Covid-19.
“The finished lessons needed to be used across a wide range of online applications, and the final product exceeded our expectations and was the perfect end-to-end solution for the business.
“This was a long and complicated project and Dave and his team have been unendingly pleasant and patient. He has also been very reactive and sorted technicalities and changes with no delay. Roll on the next project.”
Mr Meadows, Pushed’s managing director, said: “This was an exciting, complex and ground-breaking project for the nail industry. Creating the equivalent of two feature films worth of 3D animation was no mean feat and it was a huge privilege to be involved.
“Animation is a great tool because it desensitises difficult or graphic topics – that would be very tricky to film or show in other mediums.”
