An inanimate object is an item that is not living and therefore, doesn’t move. Within animation, there are many instances in which these objects are brought to life and given a character.
A popular example of anthropomorphism in animation is Pixar’s lamp used in the opening sequence of movies on which they’ve worked. We will be making our own animation of an object brought to life and so I have started to look at references of pre-existing works for inspiration.
Ooglies – a stop-motion animated children’s show
Aladdin (1992) – The magic carpet
Beauty and the Beast (1991) – The objects in the castle
To give me an idea of what items I might want to use, I made a mindmap and collated a range of different everyday objects into a moodboard for visuals:
After looking at the moodboard, I chose some objects to try and sketch in order to explore how I might style them to convey a personality and character:
I then started to look at the different environments that I could use depending on what objects I chose:
From my sketches, I felt that the pair of earphones were the most interesting idea with a range of different things that I could build on when creating the plot and storyboard for the animation. I could have two characters that are part of one object which could make for intriguing character building. For instance, each individual earphone could act as twins, siblings or even rivals.
Jasmine Cooper 