Gay man's health - Resolving the problem

Ok so every film we're asked to make has an issue to work around. For this animation the obvious one is that I need to entice people to see get a HIV test but in addition I had to do that convincingly without sound. The last troublesome element to this project was that Alistair had asked for these to be  short 45 to 60 seconds long each and I really didn't want to make that all text so you would understand because that would leave me very little room to do anything I wanted to do. I really didn't just want to animate text because to me it seems flat and while it can be quirky and fun in places it's not really what I want to make and I don't think I could make them an animation they were happy with if I made it like that. So I had to take some time to think about how to create a narrative that didn't need text or audio in order to be understood. The difficulty with this is many other information videos such as these come with narratives over the top so I had very little reference material to draw on.

For a while I considered making it a bit like one of those weird add campaigns where you aren't entirely sure what it is that's being advertised until right at the end. Michael pointed me in the direction of an amazing music video that had the style I was going for in mind and while I considered it I began to feel that while I wanted to animate something like this at some stage it was entirely wrong for an information campaign. When really a video like that would be all about making you guess what it was for and the novelty in it being that it's clever at the end, I really don't think that it's correct when you want to encourage people to use a service. Maybe if you want them to buy a product but informing them on a service it doesn't really make for a good choice. So I quite quickly decided not to follow this route any further. Bellow is the music video Michael sent me.

(Music video - When I was Done Dying - Dan Deacon)

So once I had completely abandoned any idea I had in my head I could really get thinking about what it was this project needed to be effective. By this stage in the process I had no ideas left in my head that could sway my decision. The only thing I had left knocking around in my head was the colour pallet Laura had drawn up as a rough guide. Because we had all decided to keep things cohesive we would agree to a set of colours. Primarily blue because of the gay mans health symbol but then also other colours of the same tone as the gay mans health blue. So this was the only thing I had running through my mind at this stage of the process. And if I'm honest I think this blankness really helped me.

(Colour pallet Laura put together)

It meant that I took a step back and thought about how else we communicate information when we don't use words. So I started looking at symbolism and visual linguistics. I mean you automatically know what the little green man on the traffic lights means when you see him. So I was thinking about your typical symbolism when it struck me that this is all it needs to be. It's a campaign about safe sexual health and going to a clinic to find these things out. So I thought why does it need to be any more complicated than black and white? Ticks and crosses or ticks and stop signs or something that says yes and something that says no. So I started looking at making my characters speech visual. So you could see and interoperate their conversations without having to hear them. Working on this principle I began to design some characters. I have to admit I didn't do an awful lot of character development just yet. But at the moment I'm happy with my second character idea. Ok so below is the first idea I had that I drew up just to try out something different but he ended up looking to clean cut and sweet for this type of animation. Really I needed a character who had more edge to him. Rougher and who comes across as having more questionable morals who we would believe could make either decision regarding the types of characters he chooses to engage with but would hope would make a good decision.

(Initial character design)

All in all he felt to soft and trustworthy but that wasn't what I was going for. The thing about gay man's health is that they don't discriminate about who you have sex with and under what circumstances you have sex just as long as you're safe while you do it, or if you're not, that you get the right help afterwards. And I wanted that non-discriminatory feel to come across. I feel like this character gives off to much of a goody-two shoes vibe that was just not right for this film. Having said that I love his style so that was something I kept with me.

Ok I haven't finalised the character design yet but there's something I like about the designs I used when I was storyboarding the film. I decided to just jump straight in with the storyboard eventually. I just thought that if I didn't get something down I wouldn't ever start. I was stuck trying to come up with the right idea, or indeed any, before I started. Then I thought you know what if I don't put pen to paper and start the create process I never will. So I started and the character design just came. I might tweak them but as a concept the characters are simple and none derogatory. They are actually barely recognisable as a gender but none the less I think they are sweet and they get the point across. They aren't discriminatory and therefor they do their job in the film. They are men and they aren't stereotypical or judgemental. I like that about them.

So beneath is a concept art that describes the feel of the film that I made after I storyboarded it. It shows the concept of these speech bubbles with yes and no in them that I mentioned before as the way I would be communicating the ideas without words or speech. Which I will go more into in the next post where I cover the story, It's sort of difficult to explain the character and the story separately because they go in tandem.