After completing the developmental workshops, I was ready to start thinking about what my FMP should be about. I decided not to go with any of the 3 ideas from my pecha kucka, as I didn’t feel particularly passionate about any of them, and I wanted to make something I’d have fun with. I knew by now that I wanted to create a story where nobody was particularly a hero or a villain; I wanted a story about characters who disagreed with each other based on their own ways of life and beliefs, and in the end would realise that there’s more than one way to do things and that we shouldn’t be too stuck in our own heads. I’ve been struggling with issues related to this concept in real life as I get older and find my own way to do things, so I felt passionate about communicating the message through film.
At first, I considered creating a parent-child themed animation, and I had two ideas; one about a creative child and a strict parent who wants them to focus on other, more traditional and academic things, and one about a magical father and son who disagree on what the best way of making magical flowers is ahead of a magical flower competition, with the former having a more traditional approach and his son being more abstract. I decided not to go with either of these ideas, as I already created an animation with parental themes last year, and I didn’t want to do the same thing twice.
I eventually remembered an idea I had thought of prior to the project for an animation that I intended to make in my free time; a fight between two princesses who are very opposite, with magic powers. I thought that with some tweaking and narrative added, this idea could be a fun one to make and watch; something comedic, but with a meaning present.
After some thinking, I came up with the idea for my fmp; ‘sweet chilli’. It would follow two young chef girls who disagree on what the secret ingredient to their curry should be, ahead of a visit from a restaurant reviewer, combining elements of the ideas I mentioned prior. In the end, they’d add both ingredients, and realise that combining their ideas results in something new and more unique. I chose curry as the dish they’d make as it’s something that can be prepared in a lot of different ways throughout a lot of different cultures, so it would make sense for the girls to have opposite ways of preparing it.
Visually, I wanted something a little more abstract and ‘kitsch’; Something that could be seen as a bit tacky or odd looking to some, but was created with intention and appeals to more lowbrow and unorthodox tastes. I’ve recently been experimenting a lot with mixed media, sketchy lines and different styles of animation, as a way to make my work more unique and identifiable. I knew that I wanted this film to follow the fundamentals of my recent artworks; Real life imagery and cartoon drawings would be combined, and the animation could become choppy/distorted if I felt it communicated my ideas better than a more traditional approach would. As with my other films, it would have a young target audience.
I started off by brainstorming about what I wanted my characters to be like; in the princess fight animation I imagined, I intended to have one character be very delicate and prissy and the other be more of a rowdy tomboy, and I carried this dynamic into this film as I felt it was a fun one to work with, and would clearly set my characters apart from each other. Following in the theme of food, I would make the softer character a chef who usually works with sweet ingredients, and the rowdy one a chef who favours spice.
I moved on to concepts for the reviewer’s head. I liked the idea of the character being female, not for any particular reason, so I went with feminine head designs. Initially I wanted her to look young and cute, but while experimenting I came to like the idea of her being a small old woman, as they’re usually depicted as sweet and kind, so she diverted expectations a bit. I gave her big glasses, and big hair; I came to like the onion shaped hairstyle that I had come up with, and decided I’d use it moving forward.
With that, development for sweet chilli had started, Next, I needed to figure out the story, and make any changes recommended upon presentation.