After much thought, I finally came up with an idea for a character. With basing my ideas around the subject of dolls, I made sure it had doll characteristics, such as big green eyes, small pert lips and rosey cheeks. I wanted the doll to have an innocent look with those typical doll features however, I still wanted her to have a quirky appearance with a bold colour and hairstyle and cheeks which are made to be sewn on. I have decided that I am going to paint the features on the head but then use fabric for the clothes which will make her look more interesting and come to life. I am going to use paper fasteners to attach the head and arms- this will be useful when filming for more moving actions and it will give the character more personality.- I will have to also create a few different set of eyes looking in different directions and maybe a different mouth which I can stick on during filming to express more emotion.

Here are a few samples of fabrics to choose for the clothes. I want her top to be quite girly and pretty but simple. She is going to have a long skirt but I want the skirt to look slightly tatty so she doesn't look to 'perfect'. 

Here is the cat design. I wanted to flow with the theme of big eyes. Painting him black makes him more mysterious. I have tried to make him look cute but then have a slight sinister look about him which makes you wonder whether to trust him at first in the animation. I will use paper fasteners for the head and the tail.

The deer is a minor character; the cat brings the girl to him. Unlike the other characters, this one does not move around the scene, however, his antlers and head will move. 

Designing Characters

When designing the doll character, I know I will have to keep in mind my three words and make sure she will fit in. I want to stick to bright, happy colours- particularly in the backdrop. She will have big green eyes, rosey cheeks, small pert lips and freckles. Designing her clothes and hairstyle might take a bit more experimenting.

The second character will be the cat; again, he will have large eyes and I was thinking of painting him black- which is more mysterious when the girl follows him through the woods.

I have developed the doll character- here I have added messy, curly hair and stitches- looking like a worn -out, tatty doll.

Again, just experimenting more with the hairstyles. Both the images have been painted, however, with the one on the right, I have also added textured bits of paper.

Final Storyboard.

The first character to enter is the doll character, it will show her walking in from the left and then she will stop and look around. The next scene is the cat walking in from the right hand side and gradually walking up to the girl.

After the cat has approached the girl, he then walks off into the woods, the girl then follows.

The cat brings the girl to a deer like character who is sat on a table full of food and flowers, the cat then goes up to the table and grabs a small bunch of flowers, walks up to the girl and hands over the flowers. The end.

I researched looking at doll like characters and started to sketch a few ideas out...

So far I have come up with a few narratives for the storyboard.

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Coming up with an idea...

After much thought, I want to use Stop motion for my animation. I had previously had ideas of using cell animation however, I don't think I would have had enough time to get the drawings looking as detailed as I would want. With inspiration from my 3 words, I want my story to be innocent yet slightly quirky and original. I am going to make the characters that appear in the animation out of card and add colour using paints. I have come up with the idea of using a doll like character. I initially found inspiration for this idea when I came across the designer, Kira Shaimanova, who is a three dimensional illustrator. She creates individual dolls made from clay, inspired by the unreal and fantasy.

These characters and the quirky style reminded me of Tim Burton who is famous for illustrating the characters for films such as 'The nightmare Before Christmas' and 'Corpse Bride'. 

I decided to research a few doll characters...

I like the big heads and big eyes that these dolls have; I would want my doll to have an innocent look so i'd use big eyes and freckles and small pert lips like these examples.

These two dolls have a sinister look about them; especially the one below, which I like, the style is very quirky and original. 

Experimenting with cell animation.

This cell animation was made from a series of drawings and the put together using After Effects.

I think cell animation is a very effective technique to use for an animation. It flows well and looks original with the hand drawn sketches. However, I feel it would be too ambitious for me to use this technique as I would probably spend too much time focusing on the detail of the sketches and not use my time efficiently.  

Untitled from alexandria Fleetwood on Vimeo.

As this was just an experiment, we decided to stick to just simple characters and narrative. The basic story is a bat which flies into the scene, when the triangle girl enters, the bat starts chasing her, the round man then goes in to save the day and hits the bat away.

3 words...

These are the 3 words that came to mind when listening to the audio;

HAPPY.

INNOCENT.

FANTASY.


(mood boards)