11 year old Lyra is wandering through the forest one day when she sees a strange creature. Chasing after it in hopes of capturing it, she trips and falls, causing her to pass out. When she wakes up she finds this strange creature to be her new friend and sidekick, Spore. She gets up to see a giant magical guitar-shaped tree. When they enter they find that it leads to a special land. There in the musical forest, through a rollercoaster of adventures like singing flowers and toad composers, she discovers the connection between music, nature, and self.
I decided to make my movie a cartoon, and therefore used Adobe Illustrator for my production. I had originally intended for my color scheme to be a lot brighter, but once I started on the background and guitar tree I realized that I wanted some darker and more mysterious tones. I also had pictured my poster to have a lot more of a magical element. However I soon decided to keep it less busy and overwhelming. This was also to maintain a sense of surprise and incentive to actually watch the movie and see the true magic. I really enjoyed bringing these characters to life. It was quite an experience to create beings of my own. I wanted the forest to feel alive in a different way, almost Alice in Wonderland-like. Incorporating attitude, feeling, and energy around each character was very entertaining. One thing that I had some trouble with during this project was proportions. I have never studied how the body is formed together so figuring out how to make it look natural was a challenge. Overall I loved having the creative freedom to design an atmosphere and entire world of my own. Creating my own "animation" style was also an interesting process as that was something I paid a lot of attention to when planning this project.
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