Unit 32 Assignment Two - Task One

I had an idea for a suite of idents for the children Cbeebies TV channel which included using stop motion animation and playdoh animals. The suite would include one ident where dolphins would be swimming around in the ocean, one where a snake would be slithering into the sand in a desert and out again and finally one where a rabbit would be parading in and out of the dirt in the forest. I think this would work great as a concept as the idents would really work well with each other due to their similarities. With these idents i would be using play doh which allows me to shape into different shapes and animals, this can connect with the audience because the animals aren't real and would allow the audience to use their imagination to turn them into life. As Cbeebies is a children's TV channel then they would feel very connected to the playdoh animals and they would also be interested to the bright colours.

The selection for the suite came to animals because i thought it would connect more with the audience of the channel especially when the animals are made of play doh and are animated. In the photo to the left you can see how i came up with the idea, it started as a mind map to give an idea of what we could create. The mind map included many things we could've made the ident from that suited the channel from music themed, live action, animation etc...
We could've used Toys or even C.G.I however i figured that it could be too overcomplicated and expensive whilst you can gain the same effect from just using playdoh animals, it allows the ident to simple and creative. As an idea the idents could also include the upcoming show schedule on several different places during the idents, during the dolphin ident you can have upcoming shows on top of the ocean playdoh or during the forrest ident you can have a close up of a tree that would include a list of upcoming shows. This allows the audience to know when their favourite shows are coming on and when to be back to watch the channel.

After we created a mind map we began to create three storyboards where we would play around with potential ideas for a ident suite once we made them we would then pick out our favourite and use it as a template for a suite. In this storyboard you can see how the ident is going to look, the first ident would include two dolphins, the sea and the sun. The idea would be that i would create the ocean using blue play doh, the sun from yellow play doh and make the dolphins out of light blue play doh and have them on a sky blue piece of paper. The playdoh will be quite bright colours which will be appealing for the audience of this channel. The dolphins would be jumping in and out of the ocean, the play doh ocean would make it very easy to animate it by sculpting it so it would allow me to make it look like it splashes as dolphins jump out and into the ocean from just a couple of finger strokes on the playdoh. The ident would end when the dolphins would be in a repeated loop where they would pass a ball to one another (in this case being the sun when a dolphin hits it out of the sky), the cbeebies writing would show up on the center and will be dancing whilst the ball is thrown back and forth to show the audience what channel/show they are watching.

Here in the picture above you can see a mind map i created about my ident above to show ideas of what my ident could do differently to suit different times of day, year and holidays, for example for different times of year we could have more sunshine during summer with low(ish) waves while during winter the waves would be higher as well as snow and christmas themed content. This could allow the children to familiarise themselves with the seasons and teach them how ocean waves could change depending on weather. For different times of day we could have the sun at different positions to begin with and maybe higher/lower waves as well as maybe have weather effects like rain and storms. For holidays we could have halloween style dolphins and sea (maybe red sea?) or for new years have fireworks etc... This allows the audience to get into a festive mood and enjoy the idents and look towards the festive season holidays and idents.
The suite ideas could also come in handy here as they could be played at different times of year as the desert and snakes can play during summer. The forest idea could come through during autumn or spring which gives the suite an all year round vibe. Each ident could be changed and include new features like for the dolphin suite with higher waves; we could include trees in the forrest that would not have leaves during autumn and have leaves during spring, the idents would be very easy to switch between for the channel.
Also as an idea you can even promote events such as the world cup by creating a monkey ident where  it would include monkeys together as they would play football, or maybe just have miniature playdoh humans kicking the ball around.