Documentary Animation// Visual development

I suggested to my group, as the newly appointed art director, that we shouldn't attempt to represent me and James visually in the animation with characters that resemble us; because there's really no need for it. Of course, its a very personal story we are both telling and I understand that it needs to be approach with respect and honestly; but considering our audience is the young surely we should use the fact we can literally draw anything - to our advantage.

I pitched that like we should aim towards some form of animal representation to 'familiarise' the feel of the animation. Viewers would find it far more difficult to relate to characters so 'human' looking and I felt like it would be far more easier if we used something 'non human'. I mentioned dark themes (which is something we are talking about, particularly towards my story) may be represented better with animals, visually very naive and simplistic - not cartoony - but drawn in a naive approach. My class mate also mentioned 'mr.men' but we thought that would be too cartoony and would appear insulting to both mine and James open-ness in our interviews.

I'd sat in with James as he recorded this morning and without hearing the final cut of the interview I already had a rough idea in my head about what animal would best represent his story. His story is about loyalty, about family and he mentioned that his dad was ginger, but he was really muscular; I thought it would work perfectly if we used Orangutans. James is quite small and living with him I've discovered (more than once) that he can't help himself with he sees something he could climb or jump on; we don't need to go into any details but he once scaled the kitchen door then couldn't get down.

With my story, Malachi (our character designer) asked me what I would like to represented by in our animation. I thought it over and said cat. Now, not because cats are cute or anything, lets not suggest I'm some crazy cat personal with the internet at her fingertips and only cats in mind (because we don't need to suggest that). But because cats are unpredictable, they can go from silent to claws in an instant - which is something I feel fits my story very well.

Below are a few photos from the whole sketchbook I filled up with the first concepts...
I've shown both my work mates this work and I've settled on the possibility that the animal to represent my story may be a 'Big cat' to better suit the Orangutans in James...

(soon to come)

Also heres the original doodle I gave Malachi when we were still focusing on humanoids...