Upon the final incarnation of my previous design and research document, this project was outlined to have a final product along the lines of an animated trailer, promoting a series of characters within an entirely new world, narrative and storyline. Within this trailer, facets of the created characters’ personalities would shine through, recognisable by any viewers. The intention behind this was to further upon the previously investigated facts behind empathy being an un-deniably large part of character design within any media, the belief being that once you have established empathy within your viewer or user, they are essentially “snared” in to your creation, creating a captive audience for the product.
While the aforementioned trailer was the intended final product, in order to be completed on time and be more realistic within the boundaries, several parts of the idea have had to be trimmed down and/or replaced, eventually remodelling the basic design concept to something achievable. With the first idea, several characters would need to be created from scratch, taking heed of every single aspect of their persona and design, including the actions they make right down to the clothes they wear, as each of these elements are integral to our initial response upon viewing a character for the first time. Narrowing this field down to a single character makes more sense as it allows more time for specific development in each area. In regards to developing a vivid and depth-filler narrative or storyline, it has begun to seem that this may detract from the original intention of the idea. If too much is invested within the story, then this will detract a substantial amount from the character. The point of this project is to show the character driving the story, not the opposite, therefore a more basic setting or environment seems appropriate.
As this project has begun to take form, each facet of design and ambition has been tweaked and tweaked, eventually ending up to be nothing like the original intention. The two original themes and ideas are still standing strong however, those being: animation (in regards to how it will come to life) and character design. As things stand now, the aim is now is to create a short animation introducing a new character, illustrating the key traits of their personality in a simple series of events or happenings.
