Design and target Audience

Character Summary

Summary
Lana is a cloud, she's the little girl in a family of 4. She is a cheeky, mischievous and naughty child who plans a lot of things with her brother who is a lot like her. Her parents who are also clouds always get wound up with the children as they test their patient but this is what makes the program entertaining. 

Personality
Naughty, cheeky, mischievous, trouble maker, cute, young, babyish and funny.

References
For my references i picked …
Tweety because she's a cute cartoon character and loveable, Karen out of outnumbered as she's very confidence and has a lot to say for herself but never means any harm, Spongebob because he's funny and friendly and Taz as he's very naughty and gets into trouble.

Idea feedback

I thought the feedback from my peers was good because you then understand from another persons point of view if your idea is any good or not. Even though it's brief and they only judge what you've written you then still know what is your best idea of not. Some of my ideas won't be able to expand and be as good as they can be but others can. I like having different opinions because you then think about it more and it's easier to pick your best idea. Using the feed back i think the idea i would carry on with is "The Cloud Family" as i think it's a very simple idea that could be changed in to bigger things. Although there is similar series like that they're all very successful and i think it could work out really well.

Animation Trends

2013
Frozen (musical)
Despicable me 2
Monsters University 













2012
Brave
Madagascar 3
Dr seuss Lorox

2011
Kung Foo Panda 2
Smurfs Movie
Cars 2








All of these films have the fact they're sequences in common because the original first films were all created a while ago and now films are being produced to follow on from that. Sequences are really successful if they're popular because it's more money being made as there is more to be interested about, if a audience liked the first film it's more than likely they'll go watch the 2nd one to see it be carried on. There is also more merchandise to be sold from the films. 
They're all computer animated made by well established companies like dream works and pixar. In the films the voices are hollywood stars which also makes them very popular. 
The target audience are families are all of the films above are all PG so all the family can enjoy it and all ages because they're entertaining. Action adventure films. Projected in 3D.

There is also different genres of animation for different target audiences… 

The Lego Movie
Cloudy with a chance of meatballs
These two films are successful but have a different target audience like a older group. Teenagers, 7-16 years old would enjoy as the humour appeals to all ages and they're quirky and entertaining.

Paranorman
Frankenweenies
Coraline
Mary and Max
9 
Nightmare before christmas (1995)
These films are also all animation films but have a completely different genre to the ones above. They're more scary and freaky for a older generation to enjoy.

Tv Series

CBeebies - FiFi and the flower tots and Postman Pat
Milkshake - Pepper Pig and Noddy
These are all 2D animation. All about adventures the main characters go on and the target audience are young children as they're baby programs and i used to watch them when i was much younger. 

Simpsons
Family Guy
South Park
Adventure Time
Ed, Ed and Eddy
The Regular Show













All of these shows are for older children and teenagers. Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park all have their own story lines and make more sense. Adventure time, Ed Ed and Eddy and The Regular Show are all more abstract and odd but all have the same target audience as they're enjoyable and popular.

Web Series 
The top youtube videos are targeted towards younger children even though every one enjoys them and are made for people to watch them over and over so that the videos get more views. The more views then the more recognised you get.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRQUd3vagSA

Animation on Vimeo is for older people as they're very detailed and have some educational bits in them. Younger children wouldn't understand them as well.
http://vimeo.com/993998

ASDF made a animation on the internet called "charlie the unicorn" they animation it self isn't great at all but it has become so successful because it's been recognised and everyone knows what it is and it's been talked about. It is also very catchy as the clips are weird and interesting but also the unicorns have annoying voices and say "charlie " over and over again therefore it gets into peoples heads after watching it. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu2DcHzokew

Deconstruction of ideas

Shapes in character design

Mike Wazowski
Ball, fun, friendly, happy bubbly personality, fits the theory
Sully
Rectangle, big, hard, dependable, reliable, nice guy, hero
Randall
Rectangle, nasty, scary, bad













Mario
Ball, happy, energetic, friendly, excited 
Wreck it ralph
Rectangle shaped body, hard, big body
Don Paolo
Triangle, pointy face features, coat is pointy, bad, nasty, evil

Character Design

"Character design is the combination of physical traits and narrative" 

Narrative/storyline define personality gives context (genre,location,setting) therefore has to feed into look and design of the character.

The face is the primary channel to express emotion (a reason for the many large headed characters. A lot can be said with posture and body language. This allows for personality traits to be identifiable in silhouette. 

Solarski states that how a character carries their physical weight can tell us about their personality - which body park they lead with is important. 

A hero leads with their chest.

Superman, heroic. 











Leaning with the pelvis gives off the impression they're laid back/lazy.



Shaggy, very laid back and lazy, doesn't care much.









Leads with their head means they're intelligent.



Popeye, leads with his head when walking.









Leading with the knees means they're a coward.



Goofy, leans on his knees, clumsy personality.










Cuddy
Power and dominance
Reduces arond expanding
Power: Expand takes up space
Weakness: cover up, make yourself look small.

Cartoon character analysis

Bear

In after effects we created a picture of a still bear walk through a background of our choice. We had to pin point all of the 'joints' in the bear so it could walk. We also moved the different body parts like the legs and arms into different positions to make it look more realistic.We also made the head bob to show the movement of the walk. After all that we then placed a background behind and put the bear on the background walking through it. I decided on a trippy background and to make my bear go bigger when it got to the middle of the screen. To do this i put in anchor points on where i wanted it to happen then just changed the size of my bear.

Animation Products Reasearch

UP
Released May 29th 2009
Made by Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Sudios
Directed by Pete Docetter
Disney digital 3D
The target audience is around 7-15 year olds as is it quite a young film and younger people will understand it as it's about a little boy going on an adventure but a older generation would also enjoy it as it's a heart-warming story.
The animation is there to entertain everyone and make it a little bit more interesting. 
I like this film because it's really entertaining even though i'm older, i also think the animation is really clever as it looks so realistic.


JACK-JACK ATTACK
Released March 15th 2005
Made by Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Sudios
Directed by Brad Bird
The target audience is people who like the incredibles as it's like a follow on but the age range is about around 7-10 year olds.
The animation is to entertain people.
I liked this one because it's funny and entertaining as you don't really know what's going to happen next.

 
THE POWERPUFF GIRLS
Released November 18th 1998
Made by Craig McCraken
Directed by Craig McCracken, John McIntyre, Randy Myers, Lauren Faust, Genndy Tartakovsky, Robert Alvarez, Rob Renzetti, Chris Savino
The target audience is mainly girls as there are three girls as the main characters and girls can relate to them more than boys.
The animation makes it more fairy tale like and less realistic because girls who watch this wanted to be like the powerpuff girls.
I like this and picked this because i used to watch it when i was little, they were entertaining episodes and i think i enjoyed it because i wanted to grow up to be a powerpuff girl. 


SALAD FINGERS
Made in July 2004 then got popular on the internet in 2005.
Made by British Cartoonist David Firth 
The target audience would be older people as it's quite difficult to understand and rather creepy.
The animation makes it that little bit weirder as the drawings are strange.
I picked this one because it was very popular and a lot of people talked about it when it first came out. It's a bit scary but intriguing to watch.


TAME IMPALA - FEELS LIKE WE ONLY GO BACKWARDS
Released in 2009
Directed by Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling
The target audience is people who obviously enjoy Tame Impalas music, their music is indie style so boys and girls who are into that.
The animations purpose to to make the music video look a little bit abstract and different to normal music videos. They want people to notice them.
I picked this because it's one of my favorite songs and the video is really cool.


THE BEAR & THE HARE
Released in 2013
Directed by Elliot Dear
Made by Adam and Eve company
The target audience is everyone. Families, boys, girls. It pleases everyone and John Lewis is a shop for everyone too.
The animations purpose is to tell a story throughout the advert and to make it interesting therefore people will talk about the advert and the word will get around to then all come back to John Lewis getting business and that's the idea of an advert.
I picked this because i love this advert and i thought it was really good. I also know a lot of people who also loved this advert.

Animating in after effects

Animating in After effects is different to Photoshop and it's different to making a GIF, in after effects we had to move all of the anchor points on the eggs body to the plaves where 'joints' would be on a human body for it to then move when we played our clips back... After we had made the body and the body parts move we went on to creating the mouth movements for when the egg says "yeaahhh boyyyy" we drew each mouth movement on a different layer and then saved that to put into after effects. Once it was all lined up we got our finished piece. 

Gifs

         

To create a GIF we used photo shop. To start off with you import the foottage you want to work with and then start making the GIF. The rocket GIF was 6 different shots of all the different parts added up to then make the final piece once you play it back To make a GIF you have to choose the setting of looping so that it goes on forever and ever. The second GIF i made was from some footage in my folders of when we were making a film, i chose a clip to the cut it down to the exact bit where i wanted it and looped the footage for it to keep going around and show the bit of what i wanted.