It's coming to the end...
So looking back on my learning agreement, I've definitely tried to stick to the concept I planned to do of shrews diverging from the burrow. After lots of research I decided I wanted to portray the Northern short-tailed shrew, out of all the other shrew options. -Mainly so I could make the woodland set using handmade and natural resources. I'm really happy with the shrew designs and also the choice to use the chipmunk as a sub-character, as this created more humourous moments. I think that after watching several youtube videos and documentaries, I got the characteristics of the animals pretty close to how they are in real life, but still added my own comical style to it to make it more appealing to kids. I'm also pleased with texture and colour of materials I used to make them.
I always knew I wanted to make a stop-motion film with armatured, fabric puppets, as model making (especially toy making) is what I'm interested in. However I still managed to carry out several animation tryouts, including rotoscoping, after effects, flash, hand- drawn stop frame, and rotoscoping. Some of these were successful, and some were not. I particularly got along with the hand-drawn stop frame and rotoscoping, and I felt I could illustrate the movements of the shrew effectively. This really helped me when it came to moving the puppets frame by frame, and overall all think the shrew and chipmunk movements were cohesive. Also I think the sound effects and music really exaggerate the actions, making it more exciting for the audience to engage in. However if there were something I'd like to improve, it'd just be the overall neatness. I was super happy with the lighting consistency, but feel the background props, such as leaves and twigs moved around too much.
In relation to target audience, I'm pretty sure I hit the nail. With my quirky style I feel like my film would appeal to most children of 6-10 years old. My auntie even held a screening with my 7 year old cousin and her friend and was apparently a big success, which I'm overjoyed by. After looking at the sort of mini-shows (including some stop-motion ones) that get shown in between programmes on the CBBC Channel, I really think mine could fit in. I think it holds the demanding qualities it needs, that are: humour, interesting to look at, loveable characters, and education. And especially with the education side, lots of children of that age probably will know little to nothing about shrews, so it can act as an extra fun piece of knowledge to take in after school, that isn't over-bearing. These aspects encouraged me to develop this project beyond the film, and create my own small franchise. This included a film-to-page story book using key frames from the film, and simple lines of text making the educational side of it more appealing to a younger audience (probably 4-6 year olds). This widens my target audience which also in real life would make my franchise more sellable. I also put my toy-making skills to practice, making a replica of the main mother shrew, at about 5x the size, making her cuddly and the perfect gift for any child of both target audiences. So thats more sales opportunities. And by combining a DVD of the film, the book and the toy in a boxset would suit the playful kids section in Waterstones fittingly.
In conclusion, I am extremely pleased with the turnout of this project, and unexpectingly, throughly enjoyed the process, from the model making and set design, to shooting the frames, making the typography and editing the final cut. This is probably the project I feel the most comfortable with, and really feel like this is what I want to do in the future. Hopefully throughout next year I can experiment with stop-motion animation much more, and make all the improvements I need to my practice, so I can get my work up to a professional standard and eventually look for jobs in this particular industry.
