The refugee crisis is something happening NOW. it is a major crisis and it is reaching its 5th year anniversary of the war starting. (March 15th 2011) therefore I would love to produce an animation campaign to bring it to peoples attentions that this crisis is entering its 5th year.
I also feel the refugee crisis has't got the correct expose by news and media. The media refer to these people escaping war as "Migrants".. The "Migrant Crisis" I hear more often than "Refugee Crisis". Migrants has connotations of people wanting to move country for a better life, rather than escaping in order to save their own lives. This is sending across the wrong connotations of refugees. So what do we use? Migrant or refugee??
"at UNHCR we say 'refugees and migrants' when referring to movements of people by sea or in other circumstances where we think both groups may be present – boat movements in Southeast Asia are another example. We say 'refugees' when we mean people fleeing war or persecution across an international border. And we say 'migrants' when we mean people moving for reasons not included in the legal definition of a refugee. We hope that others will give thought to doing the same. Choices about words do matter." (Source)
I created a rough thumbnailed storyboard to examine how it would possibly pan out and what potential characters I will design.
I then began character designing.
The characters in this campaign idea will be Syrian nationals, to get an idea how to capture the essence of their ethnicity and identity I familiarised myself with photographs of the refugees in the age groups my characters are. Some were distressing to see. But at the end of the day it is something that we shouldn't ignore because we don't want to see it, what they endure should be highlighted it shouldn't be a taboo. These are real people and real lives.
I firstly began to design my young girl aged 3 who gets caught inbetween marching rebels.
For my sketches I decided to use the medium of pencil and charcoal. From the initial visual research sketches I did, charcoal stood out as an effective method to pronounce emotion and hardship, making it a good tool to add some depth to my sketches.
These are some of the references I used;
I took inspiration from all children, using they face shapes to get the age, their eye shape, hair and bits and pieces from all their clothing and combining them;
I decided on a face shape and eye shape, then I decided on pigtails as they show vulnerability and innocence, contrasting to the rebels striding past her making the scene way more dramatic, they also show her age more. The pigtails are very messy to show her distressed state, exposing how in need of help she is, the help from Oxfam. I decided on some distressed bagging clothing to also show this disposition.
For my 7 year old boy I used these images of reference;
Yet again I took bits and pieces off all children. The last boys baggy jumper with T-shirt underneath I used to expose his malnourishment (from drinking dirty water). I also used the 6th boys hair style, but more messed up. You can see my development of the faceshapes and hair;
47 Year old mother references;
It was quite hard to create a 47 year olds face shape without it looking too old, getting the creases right etc. But I was happy with my final face design in reflecting her age effectively.
Next was her 2 year old child;
I was happy with the chubby style face shape and in how it shows her age and the messy curly hair.
But I was very inspired by a child I saw wearing a coat. With her hood up it looks like it has been put up to protect her from the smoke from the bombs. With her curly messy fringe peeping out of the hood I think it is a nice outfit and adds to the drama of the scene.
For my 9 year old boy I decided on a more elongated face shape to show this maturity in contrast to my 7 year old boy. This character designing process for my 9 year old boy wasn't as elaborate as the rest because of timing issues I feel he won't have a change to be on the screen for long and he will be in the dark most the time, trapped in the rubble.
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