University Year 2. Pre Production Project.

Start of my Second year at University, our first project is a Pre-Production one. For this project we were given 4 cards; Setting, Character, Genre & Style. I was given The Moscow Underground (Setting), Comedian (Character), Genre (Pre-School) & 1950's Textiles (Style) So far this is what I've come up with:

I began doing quite a few mind maps, get some ideas going. I decided my main character should be a Clown.  I've also decided I want a variety of Animal character, classic circus animals such as lions, bears, seals, horses etc. I began looking at Children's animations and tv shows, mostly through YouTube, but I put together a quick mood board of some which I found inspiring:

I wanted to use a collage-style as conveyed within Charlie and Lola, however as I'm using 1950's textiles as my style, I thought I could use bright coloured paper in blocks. I also looked at Something Special which uses Mr Tumble (bottom right) as their main character who is a clown. His simple yet bright coloured costume was highly useful as it uses an array of shapes which I could portray onto my character.






Pingu at the Circus helped give an idea as to convey a Circus primarily for pre-school television.

Chuck Jones also began producing the Loony Tunes cartoons, along with Tom and Jerry & Woody Woodpecker. I began watching these to see how the 1950's style became apparent in the backgrounds and characters.







I began looking into 1950's textiles, some of the bigger designers such as Stig Lindberg, Marian Mahler, Mary White and Lucienne Day.

Lucienne Day

Stig Lindberg

Marian Mahler

Mary White

My Grandparents also sent me some photos and clothes from the 1950's for me to use. These have become incredibly useful as I want to achieve not only the textile styles but the fashion of the Fifties too.
(I've had to blur the faces for privacy reasons)

From there I began brief designs of my clown character who I've named Tilly.

I also looked into Circus tents briefly to give me an idea of the shape and size.

From that I created these colleges and drawings, using the style of 1950's textiles...