Animation Style Ideas

The first animation style I had in mind was to take advice from Tom Bancroft in his book 'Creating Characters with Personality'. This was not because I saw it as reliable. In fact quite the opposite. 

The above image basically summarises the whole book. The whole book explains and presents images of how to create male characters with personality and when it comes to designing women characters there's only one chapter dedicated to it and even then it's only for them to be conventionally attractive for the purpose of being the love interest in your story. I wanted to create quite a negative message around this 'perfect' woman character and intend to design her around this chapter.

The short animation 'This Actually Happens A Lot' by Tom Laww I liked the look of due to it's simple coloured backgrounds but with a use of detailed lines for walls and furniture. Cos to some extent I wanted to not clutter the background but still draw in some detail.

I liked the look of the short animation 'Suzy's Willy' by Xavier Sailliol and Loic Espuche. It's simple block colours for the shape of the bodies yet the detail of the faces was pleasantly simplistic and I think exaggerated features that I hope to also present.

The animated feature film 'Cats Don't Dance' I thought all in all was important in relation to my project as it is about the invisibility of animals in the film industry. The animals in this film walk and talk and live like any other person yet they are not taken as seriously as humans and therefore keep getting the roles as extras if anything. I felt that it related to the invisible women that are pushed away from the roles of the 90210 cast and even in films, such as the Avengers and Frozen, that feature an empowering, strong, independent female role are still conventionally attractive. It's almost an insulting idea that her appearance not being a problem would be a bit too much for the public to handle. 

In one of the scenes in 'Cats Don't Dance' the popular human actress, Darla Dimple, sings about sabotaging the animals' performance to one of the big Hollywood directors. In this we see her as a giant towering over the main characters who she floods in a pink whirl pool and sends them down a waterfall. I like how it is all very feminine to show the evil side of her innocent little girly image and the water is used as a very oppressive and suffocating force. 

I'm hoping to use a similar idea of pretty and attractive visuals that force a negative and dangerous situation on the main characters.

I realised that not only did finding different animations really help to get an idea of what designs I could use but the expanded my ideas behind the story. Next time, I intend to develop these ideas in to more focused visuals from out of my head and on to paper.