Feasibility Report

Feasibility Report

For my project I would like to create a colourful and entertaining animation aimed at a young audience of primary school age. The main character in my animation will be a young monkey whose current habitat is in the wild. One day whilst playing with his friends, one of the elder monkeys approaches them and teaches them about a mysterious amazing place called ‘the zoo’. After hearing about this wonderful place the monkey decides to go on an adventure to find the zoo. The animation sees the monkey on his adventure to finding London Zoo and the obstacles he has to overcome to get there, such as reading a map, the underground tube, double decker buses, the large amount of people and the lack of grass and space that he is used too. The end of the story is that the monkey finds London Zoo and realises that he would be much happier and it is much better for him in the wild.

The story is about someone young going on an adventure by themselves to a world they are not familiar with. The Narrative of the story will be shown through the animation on screen. The animation will be split up into three main parts, start, middle and end. The beginning of story will be set in the natural habitat of the monkeys, then the animation will cut to the monkey embarking on hid adventure, the middle of the animation will be the obstacles that the monkey comes across whilst looking for the zoo, and the end of the animation will show the monkey finding the zoo and wishing he was at home in the wild with his family. Each change of environment or change of obstacle will be a different shot of the animation. I want to keep the animation simple and easy to follow.

There will be no dialogue throughout the animation, but there will be a voiceover telling the story much like the ones found in fairy-tale remakes. The narration will be in a clear female voice, I also want to use sound effects to emphasise the action taking place on screen.  For these sound effects I will look into the university’s sound library that is on the Apple macs to see if they have any suitable sounds for my animation, and I am also going to record some of my own sounds using recording equipment that the university has in stores. The total length of the animation will be 3-4 minutes because I want to keep the animation short and sweet so that I can have more time to create more quality content.

I wanted to create an animation for children because some of my favourite animations have been one targeted for children and I have grown up watching classic 2D animations such as Tom and Jerry, Hey Arnold and Rugrats. My favourite animated feature films are the Disney Classics such as Beauty and the Beast and Snow White. I also enjoy the more recent Disney feature films with Pixar such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo. This is because there is always so much heart in the story and the audience can always relate emotionally with the story. For example, Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is a remake of a French fairy-tale about a young girl Belle, who is imprisoned by a Beast in a large mansion, she then learns to love the Beast, and the Beast learns that beauty is on the inside. I enjoy how the film has a deeper meaning yet still remaining funny and light-hearted and it can be enjoyed by a wide audience.  

For my animation I want to create likeable characters that young children can relate too. In Nickelodeon’s Hey Arnold, the main character Arnold is a school kid and each episode focuses on a different social issue the effect him, or one of his friends or family. The target audience for this TV series was the same age group as the main characters. I feel that this is one of the reasons as to why this animated TV series was so successful.

For my animation I would like to create it in 2D. I am going to use Adobe Flash to create a colourful, bright and simple animation.  I am going to make the style of the animation simple, creating characters out of basic shapes. For researching into animation techniques I have been researching tutorials online and have been reading the book ‘How to cheat in Adobe Flash CS5: The art of design and Animation’ by Chris Georgenes. I am finding this book very useful and it shows a step by step guide of how create different effects in Abode Flash.  I think that reading ‘Flash and After Effects’ by Chris Jackson will also benefit for me for this project. I have glimpsed at parts of the book, but am going to read it in more detail as part of my research. I am going to create the designs for my characters using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, create the characters in layers and import them into either Adobe Flash or After Effects. I am going to take the time to experiment with both pieces of software to decide which of the two gives the more desired effect.  Stylistically I would like my animation to look ‘cartoony’ but I also enjoy the style of cut-out animation made in after effects, so I am thinking of combining the two, have my main character animated as cut-out puppet in either flash and after effects and create my backgrounds and scenes in Adobe Flash, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator, using hand-drawn images scanned in as references.

For the research for this animation I am going to be reading up on a number on topics. First of all I am going to research into children’s animations and what is it about them that makes some more successful than others. I then want to research into children’s stories, how they are told and what is it about them that make them able to engage with the audience. I think that researching monkeys and their natural habitat is important as my main character is a monkey and I would like to be able to portray the contrast between their natural home and the city of London the best way possible and develop the ideas of what would happen if a monkey buy a ticket and get on the London underground, how would he feel or react?

Project Plan

Week Commencing	Action
15th October 2012	-          Research into children’s animation, and the different types -          Research into children’s stories -          Research in Monkey’s and their natural habitat -          Research into London zoo and the city of London.
22nd October 2012	-          Write treatment for animation -          Create mood boards for animation
29th October 2012	-          Initial character designs (sketches)
5th November 2012	-          Final character designs both in Adobe Flash and Adobe after Effects.
12th November 2012	-          Environment and background designs
19th November 2012	-          Initial storyboarding
26th November 2012	-          Complete final storyboards in Adobe Photoshop -          Research Music for animation
3rd December 2012	-          Animation tests in Adobe After Effects creating character puppets. -          Animation tests in Adobe Flash creating character designs. -          Interim report
10th December 2012	-          Testing techniques such as experimenting making rain and snow fall using Adobe Flash. -          Interim report
17th December 2012	-          Testing different background effects in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Flash -          Interim report
24th December 2012	-          CHRISTMAS
31ST December 2012	-          NEW YEAR
January	-          Creating all the final backgrounds and scenes for my animation. -          Final Report
February	-          Animating character Puppets scene by scene using my storyboard. -          Final Report
March	-          Animating character puppets. -          Recording sounds and voiceover -          Final Report
April	-          Adding sound and voiceover to my animation -          Editing the animation together. -          Final Report
May	-          Final Edit -          Rendering and Export. -          Final Report -          Hand In