For our second year final projects, we’ll have to create a 1-2 minute animation showing off our auteur styles (our unique visual/narrative styles), displaying what we’ve learned while on our 2nd year. We also have to collaborate with others; this can be through help with animation, character design or sound design, or generally anything we might want help with.
The first thing we were tasked with doing was to create a presentation detailing how we would approach the project; Ideas on how we would collaborate, what kinds of stories we might want to tell, things we’re interested in and more.
This was my first presentation. It was pretty general as I didn’t have many ideas this early on; I gathered influences and artists I looked up to, and I made a brief brainstorm detailing themes I might want to explore. This presentation was helpful in generating an idea, as when I looked over all of my references and interests, I could begin to vaguely see what kind of animation I wanted to create; something with a clear linear narrative, able to elicit an emotional response and targeted at younger audiences with the idea of helping them to understand or accept something. I briefly considered creating something for one of my personal projects, but I abandoned the idea, as I felt that coming up with an idea made specifically to fit within the parameters of the project might be a better idea.
My feedback from presenting was that I needed to do something unique with the idea of acceptance; I wanted to explore the idea of a character accepting something they were having a hard time with, but I needed to avoid the usual ‘zero to hero’ tropes that acceptance stories usually contain.
After the presentation, I started to brainstorm ideas on this miro board;
https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOKVBeKI=/
A couple classmates had delved more into personal ideas and experiences in their presentations, and I thought it would be a good idea to make mine personal too, as drawing from real life experiences and thoughts can add some depth to a story and bring it to life. I brainstormed personal ideas and considered how I could link them to the overall theme of acceptance and things that I like; I initially considered doing something about hair discrimination against the black community as I found it interesting to research, but I came across an idea I liked more; one about two candles.
I asked myself what I found hard to accept personally, and I came to the idea of my grandma aging at the same rate I am. I often find myself worrying about what I’ll do when she isn’t around anymore, and I get concerned when I see that she doesn’t have the same energy she used to. I feel that this is something everyone comes to experience with the adults around them, and so I wanted to create an animation about how to deal with these feelings; I feel that children aren’t taught often that there will be things in life that are terrible but can’t be avoided or changed, and that acceptance is necessary because some things are out of our hands, and so I find this project to be a good opportunity to educate younger audiences about it in preparation for when they get older.
The story I came up with is about two candles; an older parental candle and a younger baby candle. As the baby candle gets older, his father does too; when he notices his father melting and flickering, he begins to try and find ways to keep him alive, but must eventually accept that no candle stays lit forever.
I have a lot of obstacles visually with my project; how I’ll make candles emote and move around, how to characterise the candles and more. I look forward to figuring these things out along the way and growing as an artist.