Project Planning
Idea: A series of animated illustrations akin to a series of posters used by Studio Ghibli as
promotional material.
Background: As I am writing my extended essay about the strong female leads of Hayao Miyazaki’s
work, I found a series of posters of those characters, each of them having a lot of character and
depth. I have picked several Disney princesses and decided to make posters with similar design,
which would show the lack of depth of those characters.
The posters below were made by a Japanese artist named Takumi. I could not find more information
about them. This is their Pixiv account, which is the most popular website in Japan for uploading
portfolios. This artist had also done similar illustrations of some of the more recent Disney
princesses, such as Anna and Elsa.
Inspiration:
1. The main character from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Nausicaä.
The events take place in the world with a lethally toxic environment, where only a small
population has survived. She is the princess of a kingdom, she is human and peace loving,
despite being a good fighter. She has a gift of communicating with giant insects that are
considered humanity’s greatest enemy. Nausicaä is a scientist, and conducts regular
exploration to learn a way to improve the environment she lives in. On the poster, we can
see most of her equipment – from her gas mask and helm, to the weapons she uses, as well
as the giant insects. The bottom part shows the prophecy of the her on blue that will save
the world from toxicity.
2. The main character from Princess Mononoke, San.
As a baby, San has been sacrificed by her parents to calm a raging wolf goddess, who has
raised San as her own child, equal to her wolf pups. San rejects her human side, seeing
herself to be a wolf, and hates humans with passion, as they often come to the forest she
lives in and hurt the animals and trees there. Despite befriending a human boy throughout
the movie and coming to accept her humanity, San cannot forgive humanity for what they
have done to the forest and does not return to the humans. On the poster we can see San’s
weapons and accessories, and the bottom part has depictions of all the forest spirits.
3. The main character from Spirited Away, Chihiro.
When Hayao Miyazaki was making this movie, he confessed that when creating Chihiro, he
wanted every young Japanese girl to be able to relate to her. Chihiro is 10, and despite
starting out as easily scared, childish and whiny, after the events of the movie she matures
very quickly. Chihiro’s parents get metamorphosed into pigs, and she must work hard to
rescue them from this spell. She meets a boy of her age, who reveals that he has been
enslaved by the spirits the same way she has, and they work together to find a way to turn
Chihiro’s parents back to humans and escape. Chihiro saves her new friend countless times,
and in the end, they find a way to escape.
The poster shows many traditional Japanese elements that are often related to children,
such as festival food and lanterns. We can also see characters that Chihiro saved or
befriended, as well as the bridge she had to cross to escape.
Intended outcome: The initial aim was to create 5 still illustrations, but I decided that creating 3
animated illustrations would be more challenging and will let me explore new possibilities that
Takumi has not explored in his illustrations. The biggest challenge in animating the posters would be
focusing the attention on the main characters without distracting form them by adding too many
moving elements. Another challenge is to make all the movements flow and synchronize with each
other. My aim is to communicate that Disney princesses are so one dimensional, that it will be
challenging for me to fill in the page, as they do not have anything going on in their lives except for
doing chores and waiting for their prince to come.
Audience: I have decided not to limit my project to a certain age or gender. Instead, I believe my
audience is everyone concerned with the current state of social inequality.
Methodology: According to my research, Takumi has created his posters using traditional methods,
such as pencils, line art and alcohol markers, and then scanned them in. However, it is likely that
some form of digital editing was also performed, as some parts of the drawings look perfectly
symmetrical, and there are no smudges, which are unavoidable when using alcohol markers.
My plan is to create several rough sketches digitally, and then pick out three of the best ones. I will
then proceed to do the line art using Photoshop, lining every part of the drawing on a separate layer.
I will then plan which parts I will animate – those will most likely to be the hair and the clothes of the
princesses, as well as their eyes. Regarding the background animation, I would like to make the
attributes move slowly, perhaps in a circle, to make the background more engaging without
distracting from the focus. I would also like to animate the title, but I am aware of that possibly not
being a good idea, as it may be hard to read.
I will work in Adobe Photoshop, as well as Adobe After Effects. I would like to attempt using a new
software Spine, which can do skeletal animations of 2D images. However, it may turn out to be not
suitable for my work. I have made a weekly plan of what I need to do to succeed in every project,
and by my estimations my work will be mostly finished by December 2nd and I will take the rest of
my time to polish the images and write my development process and evaluation.
Research plan: I has just occurred to me that I know next to nothing about the Disney Princesses.
My plan for the research is:
1. Become more familiar with the princesses and choose the ones I feel I would enjoy drawing
the most.
2. Read literature suggested by my tutors, which will also be good for my essay.
3. Pick 5 princesses and write down key attributes that each one has, such as doing the chores,
thinking about the prince, etc.
4. Choose 3 princesses out of the 5.
5. Proceed to the development step!
Biggest research challenge: As I have previously mentioned, it is possible that some of the
princesses, such as Aurora who is asleep for the whole time, may not have enough key items
or characteristics I could add into the page
Bibliography: The book I will look at are:
Art Nouveau: The Essential Reference by Carol Belanger Graffon.
Drawings of Mucha by Alphonse Mucha
Research
As a first step, I did not think that watching all of the movies that had princesses was a productive
thing to do, so instead I have first found a number of articles, which ranked the princesses from the
most useless to the strongest ones. After comparing several articles and reading each write’s
arguments to justify their ranking, I have picked 5 princesses which ranged from extreme to medium
levels of disappointment. According to my research, they are:
1. Aurora, who has a total of 17 lines in a movie where she is supposed to be the main
character and is kissed without consent by a random person.
2. Ariel, who throws away her identity, family, voice and entire life for a man she saw one time
on a beach. In the end, everything gets resolved when the prince saves the day.
3. Snow White, who starts cleaning a random house the moment she walks, then goes into a
magical coma, and then falls asleep just to be saved by the prince.
4. Cinderella, who wishes to fall in love so she can escape her miserable life, and her only goal
is to be pretty, so a man would fall in love with her.
5. Jasmine, who despite being more rebellious than other princesses sits around in the palace
doing nothing, until Aladdin saves the day.
The first four princesses mentioned are considerably less progressive than Jasmine, yet I decided to
add her to the list despite this, as I thought I would make one of my illustrations more enjoyable by
picking a princess that appealed to me on a personal level. I have also discovered at this stage, that
Takumi (the artist behind the Ghibli posters) have made slightly similar posters of Cinderella, Snow
White and Belle, which made me less likely to pick those options as I felt that my decisions whilst
making my own illustrations could be influenced by their choices. Due to this, my final picks were
Ariel, Aurora and Jasmine, which made me proceed to skimming through all three movies, and I was
relieved to found I could watch them using Amazon.
While watching the movies I was writing down key things about each princess and taking
screenshots of things I found useful for the drawing, such as buildings that I could add on the
background or small items that were connected to the princesses. Another aim of mine was to
capture the colors and style of each movies, as I felt it would be better to use colors like the original
ones.
I have then come up with a list of things for each princess that I will not include here, as it would be
quite long. I separated my findings into three categories: items that were somehow related to the
princesses, such as the rose Aurora held, or Jasmine’s hairbrush she used. I could not find that much.
The second category was characters that were important to the princess herself, such as animals,
princes or fairies. The third category was places that had significance in the story, which was by far
the biggest category. I had saved many samples of flowers and buildings used in each movie that I
could later use for decorating my illustration.
The next step for me was to proceed into the development stage, but before I have done that, I
looked more at art Nouveau artists, which would help me understand the style better. The most
prominent artist I looked at was Mucha, and I decided to include some of his paintings that have
greatly inspired me during this project and helped find my own take on this beautiful style.
Development
Sketching ideas: My first step in development was quickly brainstorming rough shapes and
outlines, 3 sketches for each of the 3 princesses. After I did very rough sketches, I picked one
drawing for each princess that I felt suited my theme the most and did a more detailed sketch.
These are the 9 sketches I had at the very first step of my process.
The bottom three are done in more detail, as those were the ones that I picked for my final
illustration.
I decided to do my illustration in the exact same order as I have above: Aurora, Ariel, Jasmine.
Aurora
Planning and animating: My first step in creating the final piece was determining which parts of
the illustration I would like to move and in what direction. At the beginning I thought about having
Aurora with her eyes closed, but I felt that it would be better to leave them open and give her an
empty aimless look in her eyes. I decided to divide her hair in 4 separate moving layers, as well as
one nonmoving one, and animate them all separately. I was also planning to have the background
circle with all her attributes rotating clockwise. At this point I did not put too much thought into the
backgrounds, as I decided to do the hardest part (hair animation) first. I divided the nonmoving
layers of Aurora into two categories: bottom and top. Her head was top, as it was not covered by
any of the moving hair particles, while her body was the bottom one, as it was under the hair. I then
animated each hair section to curl upwards and have the longest one uncurl. I have connected the
hair to each other under Aurora’s head for easier coloring process.
Coloring: I used a screenshot from the movie to color in Aurora in an accurate way. My decision to
pick the pink dress was based on a stereotype of pink color being more feminine. I have also added
some makeup as well as shading on the nonmoving parts. My final step for Aurora herself was
adding a separated animated layer of a thick outline, which can often be seen in other Art Nouveau
work.
Rotating circle and attributes: During my research process I have taken several screenshots of
items I could later use as attribute reference, but in the end I realized it was just not enough, so I
used the face of prince Philip as the other half, to show his importance in Aurora’s life and to what
extent he occupies her mind. I added many roses and other flowers to symbolize Aurora’s traditional
“femininity”
The attributes I chose were:
A basket with berries that Aurora used on daily basis, a teacup and kettle the fairies had at home,
her birthday cake, one of the birds she was attached to and the crown her father had.
I chose pale green color as I had a strong association with greenery and a forest for the whole time I
was working on this piece. I later put a rose in the middle, but it does not rotate.
Background: My main theme throughout the whole drawing was a variety of trees, vines and
flowers, with a mix of green and pink. Pink was mostly used for later comparison in between the
posters, as I wanted to symbolize that Aurora was by far the least progressive princess out of the
ones I chose. I added the name of the movie in cursive, as I felt it would show the elegance and
beauty. I left the crown part empty as to me it symbolizes the lack of, really, everything in that
movie. Aurora did not have enough to her to fill all that empty space. I also included her parents,
the fairies and the birds as I felt they were important parts of the movie.
Last touchups: In this step I added several textures to make the illustration look more polished. I
experimented with a number of different ones at this stage:
I have picked the first one, as I liked a slight touch of yellow color in the illustration. I also liked the
third option, but I felt that the pink was overwhelming in that one.
After Effects: Things that I did in after effects:
1. Make the big circle rotate. At first, I thought about making it rotate slowly, but I thought
increasing the speed could symbolize the fact Aurora had the thoughts of prince spinning
constantly in her head.
2. Find particles with falling rose petals and loop them over my animation. Here I experimented
with the colors of petals, from pale pink to pale white, but in the end, I decided bright white
petals looked very refreshing and beautiful compared to the other colors I tried.
After all these steps I realized my poster was extremely heavy, so I had to reduce the quality in half,
as it seems that I made the illustration very large. Despite my efforts to reduce the file size, due to
the petals and the rotating animation, I could only make it go down to 3 GB and was unable to put it
on Vimeo due to file size restriction. I ended up putting it on YouTube and will continue looking to a
way to reduce the file size further.
Regrets: Things I could do better.
1. I did not like the animation of one of the strands, as I felt it was too abrupt and rough. If I
had more time, I would have changed it.
2. One of the potential improvements could be adding more color, but I am not sure it would
end up looking better that way.
Changes I made after the feedback from peers and tutors:
1. Changed the outcome from a video into a gif.
2. Made the petals much slower, reduced the amount and made them pink.
3. Made Aurora blink very slowly and keep her eyes closed for longer.
FINAL OUTCOME
Textures and particles used:
Plaster and Brick texture:
[Link]
Grunge Texture:
[Link]
Falling petals:
[Link]
Ariel
Planning and animating: starting out with Ariel herself, I decided to give her a simple blink, to
keep the animation more realistic without making it too extra. I have divided the hair into the
moving and still sections, with only the ends and the front strands of the hair moving. I decided it
would be a fun new thing to try, so I made the hair go upwards, since Ariel is supposed to be
underwater. I have planned the rest of the layers in a similar fashion to how I did Aurora – rotating
layers and still background. The only other thing I decided to animate besides Aurora and the
rotation were the tentacles of the jellyfish. I have also added a thick outline to Ariel.
Coloring: I have used a screenshot from the cartoon to make sure I keep the colours exactly as they
should be. I have also given Ariel some makeup, including the red lipstick she can be seen wearing in
the cartoon.
Rotating circle and attributes: Just as I did with Aurora I made every second attribute to be the
prince. Besides the attributes I also added a lot of fish and seashells, using the colours of Ariel’s hair
and bra to match them into the picture.
The attributes I chose were:
The face of the prince which was a part of the statue but then ended up being broken off. Ariel
seemed to have taken a liking in it during the movie, so I decided to include it.
The pen shaped like a fish bone is another attribute. Ariel used it to sign the contract that made her
lose her voice.
The other two attributes are the treasures that she finds in her secret shipwreck cave throughout
the movie: a fork and a small statue of a couple.
Background: My main theme throughout the whole drawing was a variety of different corals and
plants, which just like the fishes I made in the purple and red colors. The top part is a big jellyfish
which is mostly transparent with a slight white tint. On the bottom we can see some of the crucial
characters – Ariel’s father and her two companions. This time I decided to put the title in the middle
and use a beautiful cursive font for it.
Last touchups: here I have added some textures on top of the drawing to mirror the texture of
water, as I thought that would be a nice detailed that would add more depth to the poster. I have
erased the texture on top of Ariel’s face and body only.
After Effects: Things that I did in after effects:
1. Make the big circle rotate. It rotated at the slower pace then Aurora’s as I thought it suited
better for that poster.
2. Find particles with underwater bubbles and put them over the footage.
Regrets: Things I could do better.
3. Possibly changing the jellyfish slightly to make it more prominent.
4. Add more details to the top part of the poster.
FINAL OUTCOME
Textures and particles used:
Sea texture: