• Animation and Children’s Development

The age of children from their early years to even their teens, is an important period of self-growth, learning and shaping of thoughts. It is a period of keen observation, curiosity and new experiences. This makes it a prime age to use visual storytelling to shape social concepts and teach children morals. Curiosity can be harboured to create engagement, and this can facilitate the subconscious interpretation of social scenarios. Animation has a responsibility toward the cultural and social education of children and adolescents, apart from the first layer of entertainment as a motive. These different perspectives on the purpose of animation can be seen in Sociologist Richard Schaefer’s “Society and Life”. He shares the opinion that mass media can serve to function as entertainment, strengthening social morality, socialisation and stimulating consumption [1].

Cartoons have the ability to allow children to immerse into their plots and, thus, parents consider animation a “safe haven” when supervising children’s intake of media in a world where we are constantly exposed to technology [2]. The plot of the animation can be such that it deeply involves the child’s potential to analyse events and solve a problem (like in the case of a detective story). This ability of them to decipher and experience closure helps them analyse social situations in their daily lives. However, it is important to note the manner in which characters and dialogues are presented to children. According to a study carried out by psychologist Steve Hossler, Bowling Green State University, in the important development years from preschool to graduation, a child watches approximately 18,000 hours of television, reaffirming our thoughts that this medium is influential and has great potential to be harnessed. Children in their pre-teens or younger have the tendency to learn through imitation, regardless of language. Imitation can extend from dialogues to body language and actions and is an opportunity for them to improve their vocabulary and words quickly [2].

For the secondary research, 18 articles were studied of which 8 are primarily systematic literature review papers, 6 are multiple-case studies, 5 are participatory research experiments supported by either literature review, quantitative analysis, semi-structured interviews or ethnographic studies and 5 articles adopt the methodology of research survey and questionnaires. These figures are not mutually exclusive as a paper may adopt more than one methodology. While studying the relevance of a child’s social behaviour in relation to the content they consume from the medium of animation, measures were derived from cognition, emotional intelligence, viewing habits, parental consent and demographic characteristics. Studies chose to cover the geographical regions of Asian countries like India and China, European countries such as the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and North America as well as a highly specific article that concentrates on Nigeria. In the chosen articles, the sample populations included different age groups from preschool children to preteen and early teenage years. A popular age group considered in participatory studies, as well as literature, was from the age of 3 to 12 years. Different questionnaires were used based on the aim of the study, either to collect qualitative or quantitative data. Most of the chosen articles mention the purpose of questionnaires as a tool to collect data primarily with regard to children’s attitudes, behaviours and opinions. They aim to quantify these attributes through defined variables (derived from existing studies) and generalise results and patterns to a global population.

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• Production Pipeline

For our project, we followed the process prescribed by animators Tony White and Randy Gossman for traditional animation [3,4]. It is important to note that the process remains the same irrespective of the length of the film (be it a 30-second commercial or feature-length film). Production can be broken up into predominantly three main parts according to Gossman -

Layout
Scene layouts are drawn based on the camera positioning in the storyboard panels in the visual style decided for the film. Any animation stays within the boundaries of this background.

Animation
Once the character's position is fixed within the layout, key frames of each scene are drawn out. Keyframes are the main poses that depict the character's extreme points of action. Keyframes are timed and inbetweens are drawn to smooth out the action. This is the "pencil test". These drawings are then cleaned up (inked), coloured in and placed in the respective backgrounds.

Lighting
In 2D films, this involves understanding the light sources in each scene and adding the highlights and shadows to every frame. This can be a time-intensive process and involves good observation and understanding of how light interacts with different materials, the time of day, etc.

Each scene undergoes a set of developmental stages in post-production where the final look of the film is developed -

Effects
In 2D animation, elements such as fire, smoke and water are considered effects and are drawn, inked and coloured in.

Compositing
It is the layering of all the animations with the backgrounds and effects into the finished composition. It involves other tasks as well, of which colour correction is most widely used in 2D films.

Editing
The first instance of editing is in the animatic stage, to make sure the shots are timed in the right place. As we move further into production, this edit is constantly updated with the rough animation up to the final animation and then the final composite. Final sound effects, dialogue and music are also combined with the visuals at this stage.

Final Sound
Temporary sound and music (scratch audio) is added to the animatic to help set the mood and pace for the first edit of the film. In post-production, the final sound effects with dialogue and music are added and timed with the visuals by the editor to complete the film.

White goes on to explain this stage as a process of the following steps -

Line Tests
Line tests are drawings of scenes, filmed to precisely match the time in every scene. This is an iterative process until the style of acting works with the timing and film. These line tests then replace the corresponding scene (the storyboard panels) in the animatic. Gradually, the line tests of every scene are added in and the entire film is available for viewing. Final changes to the animation acting and timing are made in this stage.

Clean-Up
All the animation drawings from the line test are taken and redrawn to match the final visual style.

Colouring
At this stage, the final clean-up sequences are then made opaque by filling in the respective colours of the characters for all the frames.

Backgrounds
While the characters are being cleaned up and coloured in, work on the backgrounds for each respective shot is drawn and painted in the visual style chosen. Before painting, errors for continuity are checked from scene to scene.

Check
At this stage, a final check of all designs, style and animation-related errors are checked frame by frame.

Final Shot (compositing)
The final shot involves stitching together the final drawings of the film together.

• Copyrights and License

As the project hopes to adapt an existing piece of literature into an animated film, it is important that we understand the copyright laws associated with fictional literature and characters in order to pursue the production of the film. “This is an Overview of Legal Protection for Fictional Characters.”[5]

“The goal of copyright is to promote the progress of the arts and consequently enrich the public. This goal is accomplished by giving creators an incentive to create by allowing them certain exclusive rights for limited periods of time. By limiting the duration of copyright, the public’s interest in an ever-growing, rich public domain is balanced with the interests of creators. By affording copyright owners protection in their works, copyright law also benefits the public by encouraging authors to produce original works. Characters will not remain proprietary forever. Characters, like all copyrighted works, will be entitled to copyright protection only for the applicable term of copyright. Once the copyright in the work in which a character appears expires—whether it be a book, a play, a radio program, a movie or otherwise—that character, as depicted in that work, enters the public domain.”[5]

“Copyright laws have much less nuance. The author has the exclusive right of copying and adaptation, to which there are limited exceptions. In a popular culture too, the rigidity of copyright notions is at odds with social practices of borrowing. The right of adaptation is about changing the work as an immaterial object, that is the original intellectual creation that is taken to exist separately from the (physical) form. Whether modification without permission infringes depends on the treatment of elements or features that give the source work its original character. In a nutshell, if on comparison enough characteristic elements of the source are recognisable in the later work, the latter is infringing. A change of medium or reworking in the same medium offers no escape. The notion of adaptation makes sense in situations where there is one source work and a follow-on creation that comes distinctly later in time.”[6]

“Section 2(a) of the Copyright Act of India (1957) provides the meaning of adaptation. Adaptation of a literary work may be registered, provided that the author contributed a sufficient amount of new authorship to the work. It is the new version of prior or primary work or a work that has been converted, abridged, rearranged or altered from prior or primary work. Copyright will subsist in an adaptation to the extent of the new and original material contained in the adaptation which was not present in the original work. However, if copyright still subsists in the original work, the publication of the adaptation will be possible only with the licence or written consent of the copyright owner of the original work.”[7]

It is important to know whether a piece is in the public domain or not in order to understand the adaptation rights associated with the piece of literature. For example, William Shakespeare’s works are considered to be a part of the public domain. Hence you may see a variety of movies, plays and literary adaptations of his plays.

“According to the U.S. Copyright Laws-

- All literary works published before 1923 are part of the public domain

- Works between 1923-1963 are protected for 28 years. If the copyright is renewed on the 28th year, it is protected for a total of 95 years. Else it becomes a part of the public domain.

- Works between 1964-1977, if the copyright notice is given, it will be renewed for a second term.

- All work produced from 1978 onwards may follow the following conditions-

     - Copyright lasts up to 70 years after the author dies.

The European Union follows a similar law of Life + 70 years of the author when considering the copyrights of pieces of literature.

To summarise, should work still have copyrights attached to it, most countries leave the decision to make copies or adapt the work with the author/owner of the copyright. They have the final call regarding permissions with respect to handing out the license to adapt their work.

• Vogler’s Hero’s Journey

Author Christopher Vogler put together a framework of what a well-written story must consist of. This framework came to be used in many popular works of literature and cinema and is called the Hero’s Journey. Vogler stated that a story follows the hero’s (or protagonist’s) journey through the narrative and can be broken down into 12 different stages. These 12 stages fall into the ‘three act structure’, which states that a narrative can be broken up into three main sections
- The Setup, The Conflict and The Resolution. “The Hero's Journey provides a flexible and adaptable model with the potential for an infinite variety of shapes and progressions of Stages. The Journey's Stages may be avoided, repeated, or shifted about depending upon the needs of the individual story.”[9]