Preproduction 

In this project I was given Four cards.

One setting 

One character

One theme

One artist

Whatever was on each card would be what you need to use to make a story.

I received

Cruise liner _ setting

Angel’s _ character

Talent show_ theme

Lorenzo Mattotti_ artist

I began researching my characters first and found a lot of Christianity based themes. Which I didn't think would work well with my other card so I continued looking at other religions and mythology that depict angels and came across the Morrigan and the Valkyrie. Reading up on their mythology I started link it with my theme. Valkyrie are known as choosers of the fallen. Which was easy to link to my theme talent show and make them judges. I made the series a Nordic talent show competing for a place in Valhalla. Each week the contestants would have to fight or survive a task with their talents to win a place in the next week until there were only two left to compete for the grand prize. With this idea it was very difficult to put together a key target audience, so I decided it would be best suited as a 6 part web series. There are many online animated web series that appeal to a wider audience but I also found talent show themed, animated web series called Total Drama Island and Drawn Together.

As I was researching my characters I was also looking at my artist’s style. Lorenzo Mattotti as an illustrator a small variety of artistic styles. I began looking at his colour work and developing my characters to suit the shapes that he uses in his work. I also developed some drawings for my setting using long perspectives that Mattotti uses in his work.

 After looking at some of the comics and books Mattotti has worked on I much preferred his black and white work and found a lot of inspiration in the paintings he did for Neil Gaiman’s Hansel and Gretel. With the direction the show was heading the cruise liner setting seemed very out of place but still wanting to keep that type of setting I looked at Nordic boats and different designs of them to fit the show.

 I looked at costumes and mythical creatures that would also appear in the series.