Production notes
Roche France, the Novembre Perle campaign.3D lungs to talk about lung cancer.
Novembre Perle is lung cancer awareness month in France. For Roche France’s campaign, I handled the art direction and all the 3D work on a film that shows healthy lungs, a smoker’s lungs and lungs after quitting smoking.
In short: a lung cancer awareness film for Roche France, as part of Novembre Perle. I handled the art direction and all the 3D: modeling, simulation, animation, shaders and renders. Deliverables: MP4 films, a VR version for Google Cardboard and printable posters. Timeline: two months.
Context
Novembre Perle is lung cancer awareness month. It takes place in November, mirroring Mois sans tabac, France’s stop-smoking month, which has run since 2016: fighting lung cancer also means helping people quit smoking.
François and Marion Icart reached out to me for Roche France’s Novembre Perle campaign. The film is a collaborative project combining 3D animation and 2D motion design.
My role
I handled the full art direction and all of the 3D: modeling, simulation, animation, shaders and 3D renders.
The film’s messages and their sources come from the campaign. The text and annotations that carry them on screen are part of the film’s 2D graphics.
The visual approach
The lungs look like tinted glass, inside a barely sketched torso, against a light background. You can see through the organ: the windpipe, bronchi and alveoli stay readable in every shot.
It is neither an anatomical photo nor a flat diagram. The shapes follow the anatomy; the materials are simplified so the eye follows the message. This is the semi-realistic style I recommend for healthcare: it is quick to understand and does not shock the general public.
Color carries the story: pink for healthy lungs, black for tobacco, red for lungs recovering after quitting.
What the film tells
The film opens on the lungs of a person never exposed to tobacco. The camera then dives down to the alveoli and cells, where a message explains that a single puff of smoke is enough for toxins to start damaging the lungs.
Next come the lungs of someone who has smoked regularly for several years, blackened from the inside. Then the film shows the benefits of quitting, step by step, with a calendar on screen.
The ending brings three sets of lungs side by side, non-smoker, regular smoker and 15 years after quitting, under the line “Never too late for a fresh start!”. The sources of the messages are shown on screen: a study published in Nature in 2020, the 2010 US Surgeon General’s report, the 2013 BOLD study and the French national health insurance website.
Process
Art direction, references, moodboard, storyboard, still frames, client feedback, then the final 3D renders.
The still images were used to approve the style, the colors and how readable the organs were, before animating the whole film.
Deliverables and timeline
MP4 films, a VR version for Google Cardboard and a few printable posters, made from the same 3D scenes.
The project took two months. The version of the film published on this site runs about one minute twenty.
What I can do for a pharma company or a healthcare agency
The same method applies to other organs, other diseases, a mechanism of action or a medical device: art direction, still images to approve, then animation and renders.
The scientific content is still supplied and approved by your medical team. I work directly or with your agency, under NDA depending on the contract. For a first price, try the online estimate.
Where this information comes from
The description of Novembre Perle and Mois sans tabac comes from the article “Novembre perle, le mois de sensibilisation sur le cancer du poumon” on sante-sur-le-net.com (published November 14, 2022, updated August 14, 2024), read on October 27, 2026.
The role, steps, deliverables and timeline are those of the project. The story of the film describes the images published on its page; the messages and their sources are the film’s own.