Competition brief

I have looked at YCN briefs and the Dowe edgburts one looks the most interesting to me. This is something entirely different to what i am going for extended practice which will give me a break from it whilst also being interesting. It is also something I have looked at in the past and have never tried. It is to create something new to bring the brand into the younger generation and to get them to drink coffee at home.

This is the brief:
Develop a creative campaign, new product, new packaging or communications idea for Douwe Egberts in the UK to appeal to younger consumers, to increase their awareness of Douwe Egberts and ideally have a theme that can extend across different media. It needs to present Douwe Egberts as a brand that is contemporary, without losing its heritage and expertise. We know that people in the 18-30 age bracket will happily spend their money in a Starbucks or a Costa, but not drink coffee at home. The challenge in this brief is to find a way of making coffee drunk at home as appealing as coffee drunk in a coffee shop.


On second thought i have decided against this as it is rather a large brief and i don't feel i have time to complete it to a high enough standard that would be required.

competition ideas

I think as I have A LOT of animating to do with the extended practice module i need to look at competitions that aren't animation. This way i can have a break from animating but also create a wider portfolio and possibly do more live/competition briefs because animation takes a long time and I honestly don't think ill have time to do much more animating than the extended brief.

Competition entry ideas

I would quite like to do a loop de loop entry this year. The deadline for this month has just ended so I can't see the new word yet but if I feel it is a good word then I will enter. This would be needed my then end of march I assume as it is bi-monthly. This gives me a good amount of time to work on it but also gets it out of the way before my extended practice will be getting stressful.
I would like to do this because I have not had a chance to enter this before and as i am getting more confident in my practice it would be good to show it to the world and find out what they think. It also helps really think about the planning and idea so that it works with the theme and also loops seamlessly.

Oblong

So Oblong Cinema is a place in leeds that screens shorts and feature lengths with the opportunity for feedback afterward and to see what other people are up to and they are especially looking for material from Yorkshire. As far as I can see this is free. 
However it appears to be like a youth group kind of vibe which I'm not really into but I guess it might be a more comfortable place to first screen an animation before it goes out into the rest world and possibly to practicing professionals.
I think I may do this with my animation for extended practice to see what kind of reaction it gets.

The twirlywoos

So I have an interest in childrens tv animation and i enjoy watching these shows with my nieces...as research obviously ;) At christmas I asked their mum what they wanted for christmas and she said that the youngest (1 year old) loves the twirlywoos on cebeebies. I had not seen this one before so I was curious why she liked it so much... so I watched it. Well i just couldn't get over how awful it was. The story like is so repetitive and boring, almost all visual and they have stupid names. 

However, my niece likes it right? so why is this?

Well i did some research. Well for starters the characters are bright primary colours which is appealing to young children. They are also very soft looking which is very important for children that young as they find it comforting whereas they find things like plasterscine almost scary like its something they don't want to touch therefore they don't like it. 

So what about the rubbish storyline? well Anne Wood, the creator of Twirlywoos says that young children recognise movement like up, down, in, out, or empty and full like this example very early on in their development. So not only does it have appealing characters but they are doing things that the children understand or are beginning to understand, and the repetitiveness in this really helps to cement this understanding. 

This has made me feel a lot better about this animation and I now understand why young children like it. My nearly 4 year old niece says she thinks its okay but her little sister really likes it. 

This has made me realise that the thought that goes into these animations is actually quite a lot and when they are young the difference in interest is actually quite big. They're ability to follow a story isn't there at 1 but they can understand the basic things that they have learnt so far. This is probably why a lot of animations for this age range have barely any talking in them because they haven't established full language understanding.