I formed a group with Leo and Jahiem in the first couple weeks we began to plan what to do and thus decided to focus on dogs. From this we began to brainstorm the various ways in which dogs have been part of humanity and our lives. In the beginning, we began to focus on cultural views of dogs and the various ways in which dogs have been present with the mythologies of various different cultures. As a group we continued to gravitate towards the jobs that dogs have had throughout the ages and so we decided to stick with various jobs that pertained to dogs.
from this we began to list some jobs:
> sled dogs
> firefighting dogs
> herding dogs
> police dogs
> guard dogs
> guide/service dogs
> hunting dogs
> epilepsy alert dogs
> laika
> st.bernard rescue dog
> companion dogs (pets)
> therapy dogs
From these dogs we decided to shorten the list to ones we will use in the animation to 5 dogs (which are bold). After some thinking we had decided upon these dogs as they allow for an opportunity the helpful nature of dogs but can also allow for some inclusivity to be woven into the narrative of the animation like the Horniman people had stated they wanted. With the idea of inclusivity being on our minds we started the designing process and ended up with base character design that would be developed as the project continued. The main human characters consist of a Grandmother and her Grandson who are PoC since the Horniman had outlined that many of their visitors are minorities too and so would like to see themselves on the screen.
Whilst creating the designs we were also thinking of the narrative of the animation and we decided to make the child hate the dog. The origin of this hatred was because the dog had destroyed one of the child’s toys and so he gets worked up and runs upstairs to his room. The nan would then follow after him and meet him in his room in order to read him the book ‘Dogs with Jobs’ to show the child that dogs aren’t that bad. Afterwards, in the end the child and dog would be asleep together in the bed to show the progress.