LO3 TASK 4 - Moodboard and Target Audience

Due to simplistic style of animation and the inclusion of colourful cartoon characters, I would say that my target audience is very young, probably 7 and below. Although my animation involves a mermaid and romance, which can easily attract female viewers, I would argue that due to the pirates and action that feature in my film it appeals more to the young male audience.

Jack is 5 years old. His favourite shows are Little Einsteins, Swashbuckle and Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Jack enjoys playing with his toy boats and other bath toys in his paddling pool.

LO3 TASK 4 - Treatment

Title: Stormy Seas (Current Title)

Medium: Animated fantasy adventure short film.

Running Time: 3 – 4 minutes

Synopsis: Rex the Sailor has his ship destroyed by a storm, leaving him at the bottom of the sea; there he must battle and avoid horrible sea creatures whilst trying to rescue a beautiful mermaid.

Characters:  *Rex the Sailor *Suspicia the Mermaid *Goodwick the Whale

*Seabiscuit the Seahorse *Seals *Crabs *Lefty the Octopus *Ace the Shark

Key Scenes: The key scene is where Rex meets Suspicia but both are chased by Goodwick, as it introduce a love interest but the lovers are separated by this dangerous addition to the story. Of course, the happy ending is also crucial, as the lovers are re-united.

Sound Recordings: No voice actors will be needed as all characters are silent. The animation will link up with two sets of music – Symphony of the Seas by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and a segment of Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture by Tchaikovsky.
Industry Trends: I feel that my character and story are fit for purpose and will appeal to the target audience. Pirates are popular amonst younger audiences, as proved by successful TV shows like Jake and the Neverland Pirates and Swashbuckle and how well these shows have done in terms of views and merchandise sales, so I believe my pirate character will also appeal to this specific audience.  The lack of voice allows for more animation opportunity as the character is more dependant on movement and charade. This also mean there is no language barrier so he can appeal to a much wider audience, similiar to children's characters WALL-, Morph and Mr. Bean, who have achieved global success due to using mime and facial expressions as part of their charm instead or verbal communication.

LO3 TASK 4 - Character Design

Below are the rough sketches I created of my character.

Below are the five final images I created of my character by placing the sketches on Illustrator, which I used to recreate/trace them in neat, before moving them to Photoshop to colour them in. These images show a range of emotion and actions that I plan for my character to display in the animated feature.

1. Action: Standing.
Emotion: Happy.

 

2. Action: Being squeezed.
Emotion: Unhappy, uncomfortable.

3. Action: Swimming.
Emotion: Unhappy, concerned.

4. Action: (Sea)Horse riding.
Emotion: Angry, determined.

5. Action: Dancing, waving, celebrating.
Emotion: Happy, excited.

LO1 Task 2 - Comparisons of Animation Companies

Disney

Warner Bros. Animation

Dreamworks

Aardman

Pixar


All these animation companies have produced fully animated CGI films. Pixar have made all their movies using CGI, whilst Disney,  and Warner Bros. started with traditional forms of 2D animation before making the step to CGI. Dreamworks started with CGI, made a few 2D animated films, but then returned to CGI for their movies. Aardman was owned by Dreamworks, who encouraged them to make the move to CGI animation. The companies teamed togethor to created Flushed Away, which recieved mixed reviews in terms of it's animation. Aardman left Dreamworks and moved to Sony, where they made Arthur Christmas, another CGI film. Whilst Arthur Christmas recieved positive reviews, many weren't sure of the art style or animation. Aardman returned to their original claymation style, which they had continued to use for their short films.

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/polls/1000000/1000768_1334307732486_full.jpg

All these animation companies have used 2D digital animation. Disney used it on films such as The Princess and the Frog and for their award winning short film Paperman. Dreamworks has used 2D digital animation for films like Sinbad and Pixar have used it for projects such as Day and Night. Aardman have used 2D digital animation for the creation of their ident and the opening sequence for Creature Comforts. Warner Bros. still use 2D digital animation for the creation of most of their cartoons and relied on it for the creation of their film The Iron Giant.

https://disney-animation.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/production/project_image/paperman/35/image/project_image.jpg

Only Disney and Warner Bros. have used traditional 2D hand-drawn animation, which they used on their initial projects. However, neither company uses this form of animation today as many mainstream companies believe it has become outdated and, due to the cost and man-hours this form of animation requires, many animators avoid this challenging form of animation. Another factor of why it isn't so frequently used is also that you can include more realistic detail in a CGI image as apposed to an animated drawing. Disney and Warner Bros. are also the only companies listed that have crossed live action with animation, although it should be mentioned that Aardman's Creature Comforts did use real, unscripted sound recordings and created their animations based around those.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/duck-amuck/w1280/duck-amuck.jpg

Aardman has been the only one of these companies to use Claymation. Warner Bros. considered making a stop-motion movie using Lego figures, but resorted to the easier option of CGI, although they kept it in the same style by making character actions jerky. Some Disney films have used stop-motion animation and Claymation, but none were created or produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, as Disney is a conglomerate company, so they have other animation companies for other animation projects (e.g. Nightmare Before Christmas was a claymation movie created and produced by Touchstone Pictures, which is owned by Disney, but not part of Walt Disney Animation Studios). Although Pixar make all their films using CGI, they have said the Claymation has inspired them, especially pieces made by Aardman. For example, the designs for the seagulls in Finding Nemo were based on the penguin from The Wrong Trousers. DreamWorks never made any Claymation films, but they did own Aardman for many years and so helped to distribute their Claymation movies.

 http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/32500000/The-Pirates-In-an-Adventure-With-Scientists-the-pirates-band-of-misfits-32540511-1280-718.jpg

LO1 Task 2: Analysis of One Animation

 Chosen Animated Film -  Frozen

 http://www.heyuguys.com/images/2013/09/Frozen-UK-Poster.jpg

a) Genre
Like many animated Disney films, Frozen is a fantasy adventure that also incorporates themes of musicals and comedies.

b)Individual Animators
Lino DiSalvo, as well as working as an animator for Frozen, also worked as the head of animation for the film. DiSalvo has also worked with with Disney on some of their other CGI films, working as a supervising animator on projects such as Meet the Robinsons, Bolt and Tangled. DiSalvo credits some of Disney's previous films such as Pinocchio and The Lion King for getting him interested in animation. Frozen went on to receive multiple awards and praise by critics for its animation.

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm18732032/nm1863341?ref_=nm_phs_md_3

c)Production Process

Every twelve weeks, animators and other staff working the film would present their work for the film and receive notes and feedback on how others felt about it and what could potentially be improved; many films undergo a similar process, in what is called a test-group screening. This feedback would be taken into account would encourage and influence the scriptwriters, concept artists, storyboarders and animators in what they needed to do to get the best audience results for their final product.

d)Narrative/Storyline
Although inspired by The Snow Queen, Frozen follows a newer story plot. The story starts with our main characters when they're only children and are in a state of equilaibram untill Elsa accidentally hurts Anna with her ice powers and tries to hide her powers from all and so hides herself away.
The characters then transition into adulthood through a musical montage, showing key moments of their lives and establishes their personality. The rest of the opening shows the contrast between Elsa and Anna, as one fears being near other people whilst the other gets excited about the chance. The story continues and reaches a shocking moment when Elsa's powers are accidentally revealed in front of the whole Kingdom and so she leaves to hide in the mountains, turning Summer to Winter by mistake in the process. The audience follow Anna as she attempt to correct this mistake and find her sister, whilst along the way she meets an interesting collection of characters as she comes into contact with love, betrayal and nostalgia which each character she meets. Being a Disney film, the story does of course come with a happy conclusion, although it does come after a shocking twist that goes againt fairy tale conventions. However, the villain is defeated, Anna is saved thanks to her heroic actions and Elsa learns that through the power of love she is able to control her powers and restore the kingdom to how it was, ending with a satisfyng conclusion.

e)Target Audience
Whilst Frozen seems to mostly appeal to kids, it was intended to be a family film, with aspects that would entertain all ages, such as a talking snowman to entertain younger audiences and action and innuendo to entertain more mature audience members. However, whith both the main characters being female, sisters and princesses, you can easily argue that this film was aimed more towards a younge, female audience, espiecally since the movies merchendise is almost always created for young girls. Disney probably relied on the young female audience for its viewing figures due to their large popularity with princess movies and how much they interest small girls.

http://i3.examiner.co.uk/incoming/article8199275.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/JS51910881.jpg

f)Characters/Stars
The main character of Frozen is Queen Elsa, voice by Broadway star Idina Menzel, who was best known for her role as Elphaba in Wicked. Many viewers observed that the character of Queen Elsa is very similar to Elphaba as both of them are feared because their magic powers, but neither have any true evil intentions, they're just misunderstood. It is believed that the writers for Frozen were heavily inspired by Wicked so the chance to have one of its stars play the main role must have seemed like an ideal casting choice. Interestingly, Menzel auditioned for one of Disney's previous projects, to play Rapunzel in Tangled; Disney were impressed by her audition but felt she didn't suit the role, but saved her for their Frozen project.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Fz8YIZqW2kM/maxresdefault.jpg

Frozen also stars Josh Gad, Jonathon Groff and Santino Fontana, three more successful Broadway stars. You can assume that from Disney's casting choice mostly Broadway stars that they wanted the show to have a mostly Broadway feel about it, which makes sense for a large musical production.

Josh Gad plays Olaf, the talking snowman who fits into the plot as tolken comic relief character to make sure that children are still entertained and add comedy to avoid the atmosphere from ever getting too intense for a younger audience. Gad was known for his role as the humourous sidekick in the comedy musical The Book of Mormon, so he suited the role of a comedic character and would often entertain people working on the film by ad-libbing and experimenting with the script. One of the writers of The Book of Mormon was Robert Lopez, who worked as the songwriter for Frozen, so it's likely that Lopez recommended Gad for the project from his experience with him.

Jonathon Groff, an award winning Broadway actor in his 20s, supplied the voice for Kristoff, the film's love interest. Santino Fontana, another young Broadway actor, played Prince Hans, who at first appears to be the love interest, but in a shocking twist towards the end of the film is revealed to be the antagonist. Kristen Bell plays Anna, and also inspired many of the characters facial designs.

http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/35800000/Elsa-Anna-Concept-Art-disney-frozen-35801746-1024-662.jpg