Inspiration: As I have stated previously, my inspiration will be coming from various ‘masters of Japanese animation studios’ which will hopefully work as a guide as I continue my journey to try and discover my way of animating but at the same time taking tips and tricks from those who are already incredibly successful. I think for me as an independent and young amateur animator I don’t see the harm of carefully studying these animators in order to improve myself and to hopefully be up there with the greats. Of course, I want to find my own style and my own way of doing things, but for now I really want to push myself to create something beautiful and meaningful.
Technique: I’m going to keep a sketchbook where I will hopefully have a lot of my initial ideas and sketches kept in which I will use to help kickstart my ideas and experimentations. I have already started to plan out my character, considering her anatomy and a little bit of her facial expressions. I will need to build on the characters facial expressions a lot more over this week as I really want to have a wide range of over exaggerated emotive expressions to play around with when it comes to animating. I will be animating in digital 2D animation style and hopefully show heavy influences from animation companies which I would one day love to work for.
Following on technique-wise, I’m planning on starting off with sketches, and then taking those sketches to a digital platform where I will continue my character development and poses until I’m at a point where I fully understand my characters anatomy, range of expressions and movement. I will then move onto creating a rough storyboard, which will then transpire into a finished storyboard which I will time to make sure it is no longer than 60 seconds. After further editing I will move onto my animatic which I will be creating in TV Paint. This will be my technique so far and when I’m further into the project I’ll be able to give more detailed updates when it comes to designing and creating the backgrounds and animating my character.
My Message: I want to be able to clearly get my message of ‘balance’ across to my audience through the power of animation, music and character archetype and narrative.

Research sources list: Googled images of previous characters from animations such as Spirtied Away,Ponyo, Wolf Children.
Development
This week I have progressed my project by starting from the very beginning of the animation process, sketching and coming up with ideas freely in my sketchbook as well as typing up short stories and impulsive ideas. This week has definitely been an amalgamation of initial thoughts and processes, coming up with mind maps on character traits, trying to understand how my character would react in certain situations as well as what my key message/moral is going to be. I’m at a stage in this project where I know what my message is going to be to the audience, I just now need to start taking steps forward to make sure my animation narrative is getting this message across clearly.
Strengths
My strengths within this project so far is having a good understanding of the message I am wanting to communicate, as well as having a clear enough design strategy, in regards to knowing how I want my final piece to look and the steps I need to take in order to reach my goal. I already have a rather good sense of my character, I feel as if I could already be inside her head and understand her characteristics and archetype. This will help me to be able to create a human connection between my character and the audience, for them to get to a point of empathizing with her.

Areas for Development
Areas within this project that I need to make sure I am developing next week is hopefully a set character design or at least a more stable design that I can start to work from as a base structure. I need to start to look into more characters and references which are relatable to the sort of character I am wanting to create. Next week I need to start solidifying my storyline, I will hopefully have some sub characters designed and a structure to my narrative which can mean the following week or even next week I can create a storyboard (even if it’s just rough) to work from and advance my designs.