Major Project: Land and Power

This year I plan to direct one major film. I have been commisioned by british charity Oxfam to create a short 2 min animation to be part of there campaign agains Land Grabbing.

• Land grabbing is the contentious issue of large-scale land acquisitions: the buying or leasing of large        pieces of land in developing countries, by domestic and transnational companies, governments, and individuals. 

After researching the topic and reading the documentation I was sent I started brainstorming ideas for a film.

Something that stood out to me was the way that people, in the various case studies I read, really depended on the land that was being taken away from them. The land was not only there home but the only source of food and only source of income, without the land they had not access to education and no way of making money or food to feed there families. 

I plan for one of the main focuses of my film to be how everything comes from the land.

A form of art that really interests me is Woodcuts and printmaking and I think it relates to the subject nicely, so i have been researching forms of woodcutting and printmakers.

Ive been having a go with my own Relief printmaking using lino, I love the look of the prints but unsure how I can make this work when animated.

I came across a ugandan printmaker named Fred Mutenbi, his work is beautiful and full of colour and life, i'm looking into a way of possibly animating in his style.

Ive had a go at reproducing a couple of his pieces, using watercolour and pen, to get a feel for his style.

Another art form i've been looking at is indonesian shadow puppetry, Ive been doing some research into traditionally made leather puppets.

Ive been putting my ideas down in quick thumbnail storyboards, and brought these together to create a very rough storyboard.

Below are a couple of character that i have picked out of the Fred Mutenbi prints, this is how i'm imagining my characters in the film to look, Im still unsure how this will be animated.