Initial story board of animation

Our first story board draft

This is the first story board we have created for our animation. Our story is quite short, which fits with the criteria of the animation being a short film. The story include two chicks, one bigger chick and one that has just hatched out of it's shell. We like the idea of the animation being comical, targeted at a younger audience range and this is why we chose two chicks as the main characters, because we know younger children will find the characters entertaining and funny to watch. We want the background of the animation to be quite simple, so we have chosen for it to be grass, a fence and the sun as we know that we can achieve this on the software we use.

Justification for choosing the ideas we have

Why did we choose the ideas that we did?

Brainstorm- We are both very interested in 2D animation, as both of us enjoyed, in class, the example of 'The Cat that Came Back' YouTube clip, which was the example of 2D. We also have both watched Pixar and Disney films, that include 2D animation, and would like to continue this interest by making our own! We created our brainstorm together as we both had extremely similar ideas on what we wanted our animation to be like. Through creating the brainstorm together, we both liked the idea of using small animals as our main characters, and had narrowed our decision down to either a chick or a bird. This idea also came from watching 'The Cat that Came Back' as in that video it is focused on a cat, which we thought was quite comical and in our own animation we wanted it to be comical too, which was worked out through creating the brainstorm.

Moodboard- We created our moodboard after our brainstorm. We found inspiration on the Internet, which included images from Pixar 2D animation. On our moodboard, we wanted to put together pictures that inspired our ideas. We included pictures of popular animated characters such as Snoopy, Mr Bean and the main character from 'The Cat that Came Back'. The website we used to create our mood board was Pinterest. We used this website because on Pinterest, the images are laid out neatly and we could add captions to justify why we included each image that we did. In addition to particular comical characters that we included on the webpage, we added in screenshots from popular Disney 2D animation films, such as The Little Mermaid and The Lion King. Although we are not going for those particular story lines or characters, we will take inspiration from the 2D animation that Disney created for the films.

Draft story board- The story board was the stage where we came up with the first draft of the story that we want to base our animation around. We first came up with how we were going to make our chicks and storyline comical, because we want to aim to entertain people that watch the animation and make them laugh. After talking about different ideas for some time, we came up with the idea that we were going to make two characters fight together and one to the characters would get knocked on the head and go starry eyed and fall over. This storyline is greatly suitable for our target audience and we think that it will be entertaining for kids. We love the simplicity of our idea, because we know that it will be enjoyable to watch and for us, we have made the story achievable.

Character design and logo- We finally chose two chicks as the main characters for our animation, one of which is an older chick who is slightly bigger in comparison and the other chick is smaller and has just been hatched out of its shell. We loved the idea of using small animals for our animation because little children (our target audience) will find it extremely enjoyable and funny. The chick design we have chosen is simple and we will be able to make different angles of the chick easily on the software. It will be much simpler than Disney's or Pixar's as we decided not to over work ourselves by creating a hugely complicated piece of animation, so that is why we chose a simple character. We designed our company logo on Photoshop, by using a colour code of a peachy pink, as we like this colour, and this colour has been an ongoing theme on our blog and throughout our work, so we wanted to carry this theme with our logo as well. 

Overall, we have both worked together on every we of work that we have done so far on this blog and in our work. We thought it was a good idea to continuously work as a team together, rather than working individually and not knowing what each other are doing on a piece of work exactly. We started off this project with the brainstorm, and we worked together on this, so we both knew each eachothers initial ideas. We have been working effectively as a team as our ideas started off really similar so we haven't disagreed on any decisions as we both want to aim for the comical animation with animals as the characters.

Click on this writing to view our Pinterest board

Brainstorm of ideas

This is our brainstorm of our initial ideas for our animation. We didn't create individual brainstorms, instead we put all our ideas together, as they were similar ideas, and created a partner brainstorm together, with more detail.

We have mainly been influenced by 'The Cat Came Back' 2D animation video, because we have very similar ideas in relation to how we want our animation to be. We want our animation to be comical and entertaining for children and for the main characters to be animals, similar to 'The Cat Came Back'. This is a YouTube link to 'The Cat Came Back': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW9f04Dctz4

Another animation we are being inspired by is the Disney original film 'Toy Story', this is because it is aimed for children and there is a comical theme throughout the movie. We want our animation to be similar to this as we are going to aim it at children and we want it to be comical. Comedy films are extremely popular with children because it excites and entertains them. This means that our animation will be successful because children prefer comical animation over serious themes. This YouTube link is the trailer to the 'Toy Story', this will give an idea to how we want our animation to be, however we won't have the talking, instead we will have sound effects and music. YouTube link to the trailer of 'Toy Story': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KPTXpQehio

These two videos will give an idea to how our animation will be as these are two major influences for us.

Initial idea of character within our animation

This is the initial idea for the character we will be using in our short animation. We decided to go for something simple, so that we can have a better success when making the animation as if it was too complicated it might make our work a lot harder to create. We have chosen a character with lots of positions, so that when it comes to creating the animation it means we have the character already, ready to work with, and create a story around it.

Initial idea for K&M studios logo

This is our initial idea for our company logo of K&M studios, standing for Katie and Molly studios. We chose this design, because we like the colour and the different shapes that it includes, we think they work together really well to create the logo. The colour of the writing and the outside shape is the same, as this creates a simple feel, just like the name.