Updated Proposal

I plan to create a traditional 2D animation about a young girl, stranded in a lake, who is saved by a mermaid. This is inspired by an event from my childhood with a fantasy twist. This project seeks to bring happiness and nostalgia from not only the subject matter but also the medium. This project is important because, in today’s current climate of constant barrages of bad news and endless live action remakes, audiences need an escape to a simpler time, which my animation will provide.

The medium that is 2D animation has been slowly dying over the last decade in favor of flashy and realistic CG animation. Traditionally animated movies have not been in the theaters nationally since 2011 with Winnie the Pooh, and the last one in theaters not based on a previous franchise was The Princess and the Frog in 2009. Studios are creating “live action” (read: CG animation with some actual humans acting next to it) remakes of traditionally animated movies at an ever-increasing rate. People have begun to tire of these remakes, and I think they are an insult to the medium that is traditional animation. Fans I know are beginning to tire of studios disrespecting their prior creations, and many have begun to call for the return of 2D. While I’m not optimistic on this actually happening any time soon, I believe it should. I will bring the medium back single-handedly if I have to.

I like to say that I have been an art major since I was twelve years old, and so I have been making my hobby my job for almost 10 years now. Somewhere along the way, I stopped making art that I wanted to create in favor of just quickly working toward a project deadline, and I eventually forgot what I even liked creating. By the beginning of this year, I had stopped drawing outside of class entirely due to art fatigue and a disinterest in creating. This project is significant to me because it is my attempt to find my way back into creating what I want to make and find a way to love art again. This project will make me happy, and I firmly believe that when you enjoy creating something, others can see that when they view the work and can feel some of that same happiness. I want my animation to invoke feelings of nostalgia and happiness in the viewer, and the latter is something we need more of in these trying times.

My animation will be under five minutes long. In my dream world it would be created on cel, but I recognize that that is unrealistic due to time constraints. So, I will be animating In ToonBoom Harmony, the industry standard for animation. I will create my storyboards in Storyboarder. I plan on using a limited color palette of blues, greens, purples, and pinks, that starts dull and gets brighter once the fantasy elements begin. The main characters will be a young girl stranded on a raft in the middle of a large lake and a mermaid who saves her and helps her be less scared of the water. If I have enough time, I will also make a process book, of not only the steps along the way to the finished project, but a sort of diary about how I am personally feeling towards the animation, and as an extension, art as a whole.