Benjamin ArthurIllustrator, animation director & author

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Animation

The screening room

Twenty years of films: science stories for NPR, the Emmy-winning animation for Netflix’s Hack Your Health, shorts for small children, stage shows and trailers for published books.

Reel NPR, Netflix, The Mother Company and others, with sound.

Films

Selected films

  1. Emmy Award

    Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut

    Netflix · 2024

    Animation and VFX director, main title

    Fuzzy, felt-textured guts, crawling babies and an adaptation of the NPR film's microbe battle, made for Anjali Nayar's Netflix documentary. The work won the 2025 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Main Title and Graphic Design.

  2. The Science Awareness Project

    The Science Awareness Project · 2026

    Producer and director

    An introduction to the nonprofit and its mission, drawn in fine pen line. It begins with a single petri dish.

  3. National Academies Award

    The Invisible Universe of the Human Microbiome

    NPR, with Rob Stein · 2013

    Director and animator

    Trillions of microbes live on and in each of us. The film imagines them as a whole civilization, from mounted armies to a newborn's first settlers, for Rob Stein's series on the microbiome. Netflix later adapted it for Hack Your Health.

    How it was made The story on NPR

  6. A Toy Story of Invention

    NPR, with Manu Prakash · 2017

    Director and animator

    How a child's whirligig became the Paperfuge: a paper centrifuge that costs about twenty cents and spins blood samples at up to 125,000 rpm, made by Stanford bioengineer Manu Prakash for clinics without electricity.

  7. Once Upon a Time in the Woods

    Independent short · 2006

    Directed and animated, with a rotoscope process of his own

    A six-year-old remembers his previous life as a tree. It became one of YouTube's early hits, with more than a million views.

  • TED Radio Hour, live

    NPR · 2015

    Animation for the live show's opening

    The opening for the TED Radio Hour's live stage show: a head opens up, room by room, and the ideas inside spill out into the world.

  • Ruby's Studio

    The Mother Company

    Director and animator

    Two animated shorts, Casey Caterpillar Feels Left Out and Siblings, for the Emmy Award-winning series about feelings and friendship for young children.

    Ruby's Studio About the films

  • After the Fall

    W. W. Norton · 2012

    Book trailer, directed and animated

    The trailer for New Yorker cartoonist Victoria Roberts's novel, read by the author.

  • Ninja Baby

    Chronicle Books · 2015

    Book trailer, created and narrated

    The trailer for David Zeltser's picture book, illustrated by Diane Goode.

  • The Influencing Machine

    W. W. Norton · 2011

    Book trailer, animated

    Brooke Gladstone's graphic history of the media, with Josh Neufeld's drawings brought to life and Brooke narrating.

Process

From napkin to screen

How the microbes of The Invisible Universe of the Human Microbiome came to life for NPR, from a doodle on a napkin to the finished film.

  1. Blue ballpoint doodles of microbe characters on a crumpled paper napkin, one labeled Crustation.
    1. The napkinThe first doodles, in ballpoint on a paper napkin.
  2. A sketchbook page with three pencil microbes: one with tentacles and a single eye, a spiky ball, and a gaping blob.
    2. SketchbookThree microbes take shape in pencil.
  3. Color sketches on toned paper: a warrior microbe riding a yellow creature, a spiky sun-like germ, and round black-and-white cell characters.
    3. First colorThe hero and his mount appear, with the first penguin-like cells.
  4. Two ink drawings of a bearded warrior in a horned helmet raising a saber while riding a big snail-like mount.
    4. The heroInked studies for the cavalry charge.
  5. A sketchbook page of pencil storyboard thumbnails with handwritten notes about microbes fighting infection.
    5. ThumbnailsThe story worked out small, with notes for the narration.
  6. Storyboard page 5: microbes fall into a newborn's world, the world begins to bloom, dolphin-like microbes leap through breast milk, and a microbe wilderness grows, with script notes beside each panel.
    6. StoryboardTwenty-two pages of boards against the script. Here, microbes from the mother seed a newborn's world.
  7. Storyboard page 14: antibiotics blast a bad microbe, a tall walker fires, a microbe blows a horn, and a shovel feeds a furnace, with script notes beside each panel.
    7. StoryboardA blast of antibiotics, the immune system revving up and damping down, and a horn blower signaling.
  8. A page of painted microbe characters: spindly-legged bugs, a mossy many-legged beast, a tentacled pod and small round creatures with single eyes.
    8. The castCharacter designs, cleaned up and painted.
  9. A sketchbook page of watercolor microbe plants: red blossoms, a spiny green cactus, a blue twisting stem and a furry red frond.
    9. FloraWatercolor plants for the microbes' world.
  10. A painted background: a winding yellow path past grey boulders and a mossy green slope under an orange sky.
    10. BackgroundsPainted landscapes for the inside of the body.
  11. 11. Animation testA three-legged microbe learns to jump.
  12. 12. In colorThe hero, animated and colored.
  13. A frame from the film: microbe soldiers in bubble helmets ride green creatures into battle, spears raised.
    13. The filmThe battle, from the finished film.
  14. A frame from the film: blue dolphin-like microbes leap through a shimmering sea of breast milk under a rainbow sky.
    14. The filmThe breast milk dolphins from page 5, finished.
About the film

Loops and tests

Off the cutting-room floor

  • Line testMicrobe cavalry, NPR

  • Crawl cycle

  • Felt gutHack Your Health, Netflix

  • Feather dusterAfter the Fall

  • Microscope

  • Narwhal

  • LandingBette Bumblebee

  • Rough

  • WhirligigA Toy Story of Invention

  • Wobble

  • Bacteria run

  • Asthma bird

Also

More work for the screen

Full work history

Film and television

  • Fruitvale Station2013 Storyboards, illustrations and animatics for Ryan Coogler's film
  • Civilians An animated segment for the MTV series, with Left/Right

Live stage

  • Radiolab, Freakonomics and TED Radio Hour Visuals for the shows' live stage performances

Health and medicine

  • Johns Hopkins Medicine A series for Respecting the Circle of Life, a sexual and reproductive health curriculum culturally adapted for American Indian communities
  • Trauma Transformed A series for medical providers on the experience of gender non-conforming people, part of California's ACEs Aware initiative
  • Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Employee education on best practices for affirming gender identity
  • ETR Videos and materials for HealthSmart, a skills-based health curriculum for middle and high schools

Education, industry and government

  • Stanford Graduate School of Business Produced, directed and animated hundreds of class videos across dozens of online courses
  • State of California An animated film on the Racial Equity Framework in eight languages and ASL, for the Racial Equity Commission (in production)
  • Iowa Department of Revenue Videos for the I-Pledge program, on the state's laws for selling alcohol, tobacco and vapor products
  • Dell An internal pitch film for a new product design

Say hello

Write to me

For animation, title design and visual effects, through my studio ArthurAnimation, or just to say hello.