As with the start of any project, I had to start with some planning of how I wanted the overall outcome to appear, such as what kind of genre i wanted to go for, what was the story going to be, what is my target audience, etc. I started with a few story concepts by jotting down brief plots in a sentence or two of what i would base the story around before developing them a bit more to then decide between them which i wanted to pursue for my animation.
My first story concept was brought around with the help of my sister who suggested I animate the life cycle of a dog and give it a sad ending, but i suggested a bitter-sweet one might be more engaging and thought provoking. I took this concept and decided I’d make it an old dog that gets sick with an owner who is also old, showing how long they’ve been together and grown alongside one another, metaphorically in the humans case, so they have a close bond. The dog starts off cuddling the owner on the sofa then gets up to go outside where it lays down under a tree and closes its eyes in preparation for death. The owner notices the dog has been gone for a while and goes outside to investigate, finding their dog dead, they go over and hold it, gently petting its head as the spirit of the dog watches and sits beside the owner with a Luna Moth on its head or shoulder or just somewhere nearby. Whether the owner would also die or not was a big decision, because on one hand, it could seem too predictable that they both died and make the animation sort of cringey, but on the other hand it could help make the animation not be too depressing and have a happy ending where they’re reunited. The idea of having a Luna Moth specifically is that they are a representation of new beginnings and rebirth, which I thought fit in quite well with the afterlife as it is a new beginning of a new life.
Further into development, I was starting to think of ways the environment could be tied into the story so that everything in my animation had a place and purpose. Since having the pair just die of old age would give it a nice satisfied end to life kind of situation, I thought that was too easy and didn’t have as big of an impact as if I were too have them suffer with starvation, frostbite or even taking away the house and have them be homeless, holding and confiding in eachother until they died. Continuing on with the idea of the environment telling a story, colour pallets sprung to mind as I know colour has a huge role in emotions. Tones and shades of colours can have all sorts of different connotations, but the most universal language in colours are hot and cold, where hot colours such as orange, yellow, red, are happy colours and would make people think of warmth like the sun or a nice warm fire or a day at the beach, whereas cold colours such as blue, green, purple, seem more depressing and people would associate them with ice, death and loads of other negative things. Taking all this colour research into mind, I started playing around with colours and their place in the environment, imagining the two characters as cold colours to represent their sickness, with everything around them in the house -if I was going with the house idea- as warm colours to signify that this is their well loved and secure home, and then whenever they step outside its all cold colours to show that the world outside is unforgiving and that it puts more pressure on the characters illnesses making them worse.
The idea of the afterlife was that it’d blend in with the real world but have spirits majestically running around as glowing colourful outlines with magical trails of sparkles as they moved, making death not seem so bad, and pointing to the fact that all souls get reunited after death to live another life together for the rest of time.
Mid-way through this idea, I was talking to tutors and some classmates and we all decided that this idea might be a bit too depressing to work on for the whole year and it could be hard to find motivation to continue producing something so upsetting, so I made a second concept of a happier storyline which better suited my interests and reflected what I actually wanted to animate.
My second concept was about constellations in space helping a small star to become a constellation. My first run through of this idea was that there were two animal constellations in the sky who meet at night and are asleep during the day. A smaller star shows up one night, possibly after watching them for a few nights, before finding the courage to go up to them and ask for help with becoming a constellation. They all meet-up the next night and run around, gathering up stars for the small star to consume and grow into a constellation. The star then becomes a full constellation seen in the view of a telescope, and is recorded as a newly recognised constellation.
Building off of this idea I changed a few bits but kept a similar story, as doing a whole day/night cycle would be tedious and make the animation too complicated as I’d need to do something to fill in the space of the daytime and make it coherent that they’re asleep before coming back out each night. To replace this bit, I took a different angle and set the animation in space itself which would let me concentrate fully on the constellations and the stars, making it easier and more realistic of a goal within my timeframe. My final pass ended up with two strong and noble creatures, a bull and a wolf, helping a small star gather star dust to become a strong constellation like them. They see a planet that the star dust resides around, and chase the dust through the crystal rings, herding it to the small star who grows bigger until it explodes and becomes a bear constellation. The final scene shows a telescope view zooming out from the sky and down to a book, recording the new constellation, then we see all 3 of the constellations together and the screen slowly fades to black.