The initial animation design will show a singular pigeon focused on the centre of the screen while the background will be slowly going by as the pigeon walks. The background scenery will transition through history, starting from the World War and finishing in the present day. The idea behind this is to show the reliance of the pigeon in earlier years, such as both world wars.
With only 20 seconds to show the importance of pigeons, the background transitions will only show significant events throughout history. This will still get the message across in the short timeframe. The conceptual design within the animation will be the background transitions. Each frame will be linked to the previous frame by the path, sky or clouds, this is to maintain a smooth transition.
This is the first sketch up of the animation sequence. The story board shows the visual scenes that will take place. As you can see the pigeon remains centred throughout and the background will change in each frame. This sketch will be enhanced digitally and eventually created into the classical animation sequence.
After digitally enhancing the storyboard sketch, this was the result. Digitally enhancing the sketch creates a detailed visual to the thought process behind the animation. The first two frames show the world war scenery with a message being strapped to the pigeon. The conceptual transition behind this animation will be the background e.g., the sky and clouds. Starting off with a very dull sky to show the brutality of the world wars and emphasise the pigeons heroicness during this time period. Moving onto the third frame, this shows the grey clouds clearing and buildings appearing, now the pigeon has moved out of the war time zone and is slowly entering the modern world. The fourth frame shows the pigeon being caged, this is to show the pigeon racing that still takes place today. The next two frames show a blue sky and people appearing, this is to show the audience that the pigeon has now moved into towns and cities. The blue sky is a metaphor to the pigeon’s emotions, its happier coming into the present day because the wars have ended. The last two slides show the way pigeons are treated today. Having to fend for them selves in litter and drug riddled areas as well as having abusive comments hurled at them. In the last slide the grey cloud is slowly coming back, this is to show that the pigeon is no longer happy and is starting to feel sad again.