I’m still experimenting with my character design, I’m yet to have reached a design that I’m fully happy with but I know that if I keep at it I will develop an idea which I feel fits my animation and the visual ideas that I have for it.

Character traits that I’m playing with throughout and that I won’t be changing is the hair. The hair is going to be very much a signature trait for my young heroine. The bun on the one side is a popular hairstyle for young Japanese girls which I’ve discovered through my research and so I felt for her age range especially that this fitted well. Now to consider the environment she’s living in and taking in the fact that she is alone in this world, I wanted one side of the hair to have fallen down. To signify the fact that she is unable to put it back up due to lack of resources (No shops) and no parents/guardians to help her do it (illustrates her age).  But why does she not take both sides down? Because if she was to do that then she is choosing to forget how her life used to be, or perhaps the person that helped her with her hair in the first place. For a childs mind, her hair being up represents some kind of safety, like a warm memory from the past.

Research sources list:
I googled more references in order to create moodboards to help me throughout my iterative design work as well as research into narrative and storytelling via the internet.
Development
This week my character design has started to take a lot more shape and structure, Instead of trying to create a character without much thought, this week I’ve really questioned myself on why her appearance is this way, should it be different due to how she’s living, how do I make her appear young. These are elements that will really work to set the scene and of course display my character in her truest form. Through looking at reference images I’ve been able to start planning my designs around her age and the character design elements needed in order to reflect this age, something that I wasn’t aware I was doing wrong at the beginning. After talking to Jon about the overall message or moral I wanted my animation to convey we realised that it would be around the idea of ‘Balance’, a balance between humanity, nature and technology, which would be clearly communicated through challenges my character will face and the ways she is successful in overcoming them.
Strengths
My strengths this week within this project have been that both my character and story have come along way, to a point now where I can start to storyboard them. My character design is starting to slowly but surely represent the character that I imagined being in my animation, having considered her cultural background, environment and age. My fable idea has been refined where I’m now excited to start creating more designs and play around with compositions and backgrounds as I now know how I can clearly communicate my message.

Areas for Development
I know my aim was to try and have a storyboard done this week, although that has happened I will get this done over the weekend so I can start to consider timings, how long each scene needs to last and how I want the overall animation to look. I will also over the next week get my designs for all my characters finished and hopefully be able to have some rough character sheets finished along with some designs and drafts for the backgrounds. While I’m working and drawing I’m going to listen to music that could potentially feature in my animation and see what works and feels best.

These are my first attempts at storyboarding my fable, I’m yet to finish it as still contemplating the ending and timing but so far some of the ideas that I’ve come up for for the scenes I think reflect what I’m trying to show rather well. I wanted to create an immersive animation that shows off alot of the characters traits and the world which shes in. Camera angles are so important in order to create clarity of story and time within an animation piece and even though I’m happy with this first attempt I will be relooking and designing these in the near future

For my story, I knew when we were tasked to create a 1 Minute animation that I wanted my story to reflect the animation/narratives/animatic style that has inspired me throughout my progression as an animator. Some of the key influencers for this project have been Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Hosoda, Makoto Shinkai, Keiichi Sugiyama, Pendleton Ward, And Porter Robinsons animated music video ‘Shelter’.
I want to be able to create a character that resonates with a huge audience, having my character as a young innocent human being will already play on most peoples emotions and open up a connection from the get-go.

https://www.wcwonline.org/2010/humans-are-hardwired-for-connection-neurobiology-101-for-parents-educators-practitioners-and-the-general-public

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/maternal-instinct-is-wired-into-the-brain/

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/staring-baby-eyes-brain-waves-sync

As human beings are apparently ‘hardwired for connections’ especially when it comes to young children and this connecting to our instinctive nature (Paternal instinct and maternal instinct) to survive and to procreate in order to ‘keep the human race alive’. Especially when you look at why young children look how they do and how this connects to us, for example, large eyes on a baby and young child have what I would describe as a rather hypnotic element to them, I know when I look at a baby they tend to lock onto you and you both end up staring at each other. As the baby is trying to figure you out, life out etc, you take it upon yourself to show this new life how you should respond to human interaction, by smiling, waving, talking slowly, laughing and giving them the attention they need. This is such a crucial part in their development, so by having my child, not as young as a baby but still a child all the same, on her own in this unusual and strange world will hopefully trigger the viewers impulsive and internal empathy, concern and warmth.