Annie Final Concept and Lineup

After finalising Annie's design and colour scheme I began making character rotations. I created a front and back view of the character- we decided to never have Annie viewed from the direct side so this was unnecessary. Below, I have Annie's front and back view, followed by a concept version, and lastly a front, three quarter and back view lineup.

I created the three rotation views as puppets in 'Painttool Sai'. By this, I mean that I designed all of the body parts in layers, including the facial features. This allows for the features to be swapped such as the mouth and eyes, and the arms and legs can be easily rotated to create different poses. I saved the 'Painttool Sai' files as .png so that they could easily be transferred into After Effects and manipulated.

Secondary Character Development

I came back to my group with Annie's design which was received well and everyone agreed that they wanted to keep this design for the animation. However when we considered the environments she would be placed in within our short, we decided that her yellow dress almost makes her blend within the surroundings and would not stand out against our jungle environment which would mostly be comprised of greens, yellows and oranges. 

As a team, we agreed that a change from yellow to red would be the most succeful and visually appealing as it is complementary of the greens within the jungle and gives her more of a general charming and appealing look.

Annie Initial Concept

Here is my first finished concept drawing of Annie.

Initial Character Development

As a group, we sat down and began to doodle ideas for Annie's design. This was my first design idea which the team gave approval to and we decided to go forward with. I was planning on doing other possible ideas for her design, but the team was happy with this one as they felt it encapsulated Annie's personality well so we stuck with it.

I then took the pencil doodle home and began re-producing the design digitally, in 'Painttool Sai'. I used the pre-set acrylic brush which gave the design a slight rough edge and I made sure to create the character without the use of black lines, this gave Annie a clean, minimalistic and bold look. It also made the design look as if it was composed of shapes that have been cut out and pasted into layers- reminiscent of the common childhood activity. Here is my character creation development:

Using my sister Kiwi as reference, I gave Annie messy hair to symbolise cheekiness and a tomboy-ish nature. My sister's excitable and energetic personality means that her hairstyle always falls out and becomes messy so I reflected this small part of Kiwi's personality in Annie's design. I gave Annie a cute and covered up outfit to suit her age. The clothing consists of a white under shirt and a dress with a pocket; I made the dress yellow to suit the vivid jungle theme as well as her sunny disposition. Furthermore, I gave her black shorts to make the dress more modest as she is only a young girl. In terms of facial design, I gave her big eyebrows and freckles to make her seem more innocent looking as well as to give her her own unique quirk. 

Character Research

After we decided on our storyline I began to look for sources of inspiration for the main character, Annie. To keep Annie true to the heart-warming and child-like storyline we created, I looked for examples of characters of a similar age to understand the proportion, characteristics and behaviour that is portrayed. 

I had a primary and a secondary source that I used for the research and development of my character. Firstly, I looked at the three orphan sisters Agnes, Edith and Margo from the 'Dreamworks' feature film Despicable Me as my secondary source. The sisters are very valuable for research in this topic as they are all unique, and yet still carry all the traits of typical young girls. As Annie's age is 5, I decided to use the middle sister Edith (Wearing pink) as a sizing and proportion reference; the eldest sister Margo seemed too mature and the youngest sister Agnes seemed too baby-like compared to our plan for Annie.

I found this 'Dreamworks' featurette on the sisters useful whilst researching:

For my primary research, I used my own sister Kiwi as reference who is 5 years old; the same age as Annie. Kiwi is cute, energetic and loves to play. In our story, Annie goes into her imagination or 'her world' with her new toy, like my own sister probably imagines she does when she plays with her dolls and cuddly toys. I analysed her behaviour to get an idea of how to design and animate Annie which was extremely helpful. I included some pictures that helped me design a more believable Annie as well as representing Kiwi's personality.

These elements of research combined gave me a good base structure to start designing Annie with.

Finalised Storyline

As a group, we arranged another meeting where we created a finalised 'script' that plotted out our storyline and exhibited simply who would take on which parts of the story. We decided ourselves who would take lead of each scene for their 30 seconds of animation.

SCENE 1: Opening Sequence (Kirstie)

- The film opens with a young girl running through a dense green jungle. Daytime setting, colours are warm, consisting of bright oranges, pinks and reds. Happy atmosphere.
- She continues to run through the jungle, stopping suddenly when she hears rustling from a nearby bush. She moves loser, creating a partition in the leaves and pulling them back to reveal a small chubby pig, wallowing in mud and eating a mango.
- She runs up to the pig excitedly, picks him up and squeezes him hard. She then looks at the pig smiling. He looks back expressionless. They look back and forth. Montage begins.

SCENE 2: Montage Sequence (Theo)
- The music begins at the end of the previous sequence, reaching it's peak as it transitions into the montage sequence.
i. The two are attempting to play fetch in the sand. The girl throws a stick and the pig watches, unmoving and uncooperative.
ii. Swinging on vines. Girl is swinging confidently in the centre of the vine, the pig is clasped on to the end of the vine, holding on by his mouth.
iii. The two are sitting in the treetops, admiring the view.
iii. The two are sunbathing, drining out of coconuts with straws and umbreallas. Pig is tanning with sunglasses and a tanning reflector.
- The two are playing with something that gets thrown into the nearby trees.

SCENE 3: Monster Sequence (Kyomi)

- The girl takes a step forward to retrieve the item. As her foot makes contact with the floor she notices the earth rumbling and small rocks and debris on the floor begin to shake.
- Camera changes to be through the monsters eyes looking down on Annie and the pig. She looks miniscule, showing the scale of the monster. The monster roars and the two run away in fear.
- They run through the jungle until they make it to a cave. They hide inside and breathe heavily, frightened.

SCENE 4: Reality Sequence (Reke)

- Annie hears echoes of her mother'svoice coming from the depths of the cave. She follows the sound until she sees a beam of light, shining up from the cave floor.
- She reaches into the light and lifts a panel on the floor, in reality lifting a box off of her head to reveal the light. She changes from her imaginary world to reality.
-The location changes to Annie's back garden and her mother is calling to come inside the house. She drops her *piggybank* and runs inside. The camera pans out into space, revealing the entirety of 'Annie's World'.

THE END

Group Meeting

We conducted our first group meeting, using the brain storm sheet to expand on and develop our ideas. We decided on the themes of the story and came up with a basic storyline to work from:

Themes:

- Children creating 'worlds' with their imagination.
- Heartwarming story.
- Child & Animal.
- Travelling montage- Going on a journey, adventure.

Story Summary:

Child girl in imaginary world *environment* going on an adventure with her sidekick *animal*. Story and tension builds. Climax to a perilous end. Climax becomes anti-climax as child's mother calls her inside. Scene changes and she is in her back garden with a toy animal. Discards animal and runs inside.

Here are our notes from the meeting:

"Yesterday night we were able to conclude on the overall structure of the narrative, the characters,
animation style and environment. So with that in mind everyone can begin to do their individual research on their specific area on the project in perpetration for our pitch/ presentation.

Things to consider as part of your research :

Kirstie:

– Animals that you find appealing that works with the visual aesthetic we discussed tonight.

“A uncooperative sidekick that loves to eat” it doesn't have to be limited to just a pig as in

the real world she is playing with a stuffed animal/toy.

– Character developments which you already did tonight, but you could also do some on

other animals that you found and / or do some other refined variations of your final idea.

– Maybe a mood board and some colour schemes.

– Think of how the character would move and be animated in animatic form to move the story

forward.

Kyomi:

– Character research on the female lead character.

– Think about colour schemes and clothing.

– You mentioned you could use your sister as a source of primary research. Think about what

a little girl at around the age of 6 would love and how they would react and interact with a

uncooperative sidekick who only has food on his mind.

– A final design of the character.

Theo:

– look at a diverse range of jungle environments paying attention to the vegetation and nature's natural

colour schemes.

– look at stylised examples of jungle inspired terrains.

– begin to think about how you will model and recreate these environments in a 2D style while

balancing performance with quality.

– Think about how the back garden would look and incorporate the themes from the jungle.

giving the illusion of an exaggeration based on reality from a child's imagination.

Reke:

– working on storyboards generation, scripts and story development.

– Working with the team to finalise the overall render style and visual aesthetic based on

everyone artistic approach to their allocated 30secs of animation.

– Working with the team to create character and environment templates.

Note: this does not include all the work everyone as individuals is going to have a part in the

overall project, this only outlines the tasks at this current stage of the project and will be constantly

amended as time progresses.

This project is not set in stone and will and is always subject to changes. If you feel something

doesn't feel right and isn't working everyone has the right to speak out and we will make sure that

the issue is addressed and resolved as a group. The more open we are as a group the better the

quality of our work will be.