PixelPEC
Historical Museum Frankfurt
Three historical explainer videos for the Historisches Museum Frankfurt
about the project
Client: Historical Museum Frankfurt
Target audience: Children & teenagers
Production: Hybrid motion design + AI animation
briefing
How do you convey revolutions, imperial coronations, and the horrors of National Socialism to children and teenagers? How do you explain complex topics without oversimplifying them? How do you talk about something as terrible as the Holocaust with the necessary seriousness, but without causing shock? Three episodes. Three eras. One unifying concept that works as a digital extension of the museum exhibition and also as an independent educational format.
The concept “Beanie” — a character who experiences history
The core of all three episodes is our hand-drawn character: Beanie – a curious,
expressive little figure who lives on the cover of a school notebook.
The notebook opens – and Beanie jumps straight into history:
diving into historical paintings, hiding among revolutionaries, watching the prince-electors in
amazement during the voting ritual, and waving goodbye to the audience at the end.
Beanie is not an explanatory moderator. He is a companion – curious, sometimes overwhelmed, sometimes outraged. Just like the audience. This is the key to the concept: Beanie makes history tangible, not just narrated.
The visual concept deliberately plays with materiality and layers. Beanie moves across the lined pages of a notebook. Historical paintings, photographs, and illustrations are collaged into this world – like found objects that someone has collected and pasted in. The notebook serves as a metaphor for curious learning, for discovery, and for a personal engagement with history.
The episodes: Three chapters of a city
The three explainers are independent, yet connected through the character Beanie, the visual style, and the narrative tone. Each episode opens the same notebook – and reveals a different world behind it.
Episode 01 – 1848:
Revolution in the notebook: hunger, uprising, and the National Assembly in the Paulskirche – the first democratic movement in Germany – and why it failed.
Episode 02 – Kingmakers:
Frankfurt and the Holy Roman Empire: How Frankfurt was, for centuries, the place where emperors were elected and crowned –from the Golden Bull of 1356 to the dissolution of the Empire in 1806.
Episode 03 – National Socialism:
Darkness and resistance: Frankfurt under the Nazi regime –antisemitism, deportation, the Holocaust – and the people who resisted.
Hybrid Production:
The best of both worlds – combined methodically.
PixelPEC stands for a clear approach to integrating AI: AI is not a replacement for craft quality, but a tool for precise, controlled use. In this project, that means: traditional motion design carries the creative and aesthetic responsibility, while AI animation is used where it creates real added value.
Traditional motion design
Every frame is conceptually considered. Beanie’s animations, the typographic overlays, cuts, and overall timing are all in human hands. The emotional weight – especially in the episode about National Socialism – comes from deliberate, craft-driven decisions: what is shown, how long it is shown, and what is left out.
AI animation as a tool
Historical crowd scenes such as revolutionary paintings or coronation processions can be subtly brought to life using AI – a gentle movement in the crowd, flickering torchlight – without altering historical sources. The use of AI is curatorially guided, not driven by algorithms.
Why this approach works
Purely AI-generated animation has a problem: it often feels arbitrary. Especially with historical topics – where every image carries responsibility – this can be critical. Our hybrid approach ensures that creative and ethical control remains with the team, while AI tools increase production efficiency and unlock visual possibilities that would be disproportionately time-consuming in a traditional workflow.
The result: videos that look like high-quality handcrafted work –because they are. With the level of detail and the speed that modern educational productions require.
