Building off of the idea that IDP’s were Invisible Citizens – people who have been unnoticed by the world, who have no rights within their own country, and who need our help. We needed to educate people on what an IDP is – but this was not an easy task as there are many reasons why people are displaced, and further IDP’s are often confused with refugees. Internal displacement has gone mostly unreported and invisible to the eyes of the world. Yet, they represent the majority of the forcibly displaced (63%) and the most vulnerable—lacking basic protections that refugees and migrants have access to. We needed to clearly delineate the difference. Based on our research, we learned that disaster and conflict as the top causes of displacement, so we knew we needed display this in a simple way.

The animation was generated as part of a string, and not in the traditional way using After Effects or Flash. We treated each pixel as if it were a stitch. The world we built, including the characters, were designed to maintain the authenticity of cross-stitching, while carefully addressing the tragedy of shattered homes. The film included thousands of cross stitches and and intense rendering process.