Wonder - The Idea

What inspired me to do a animation like Wonder was when we were researching different animation types through the net, one that took my eye was the John Lewis Christmas advert, the animation they did looked like a pop up book, a bear and a hare that celebrate Christmas in a magical way. Then, imagining a animation that was like a story becoming alive was quite engaging, like a side scrolled adventure all on one take. As days went by, I discovered a game called Limbo which was a about a boy on a adventure to rescue his sister in a grim world, when watching each walk through, ideas began to grow in my mind. With these two ideas stirring together I could have a unique ingredient that will mix story telling with dark fantasy type genre, the boy some of the objects in the game are silhouetted, which inspired me to make some of the characters and the objects in my animation like that, which forces the audience to imagine of the what the characters would look like without the silhouette.

       
(Above) A Image of the game 'Limbo'

However, this was just an idea, far from developing into any sort. But then, discussing with a friend, he had a idea of his own for a animation, about a snowman who wanted warmth and would eventually die in a peaceful way at the end of the animation. We talked about it for a while, exchanging ideas until I mentioned about my idea, about a traveler of some sort, walking through a landscape. He liked that idea, in conclusion, we mixed our ideas together and developed a story line. A traveler taking care of a snowman to take it on a journey to get warmth.
 Moreover, we made ourselves do a little homework, we designed characters and tried to fill in the gaps of the story. During this course of time, I was interested in the genre of the apocalypse, I watched several movies and played certain games to feel the atmosphere within it, such as 'The Road' or 'The Last Of Us'. What made these quite similar was that it is the journey and the relationship between the two characters that makes it so important and engaging, which is was the aim for the animation. It gave me the sudden idea of setting it in a post apocalyptic world so the relationship can bond when in desperate times, even with little dialogue, you can tell by the actions of what the characters are doing that the relationship is becoming stronger.

   
(Left) The Road (Right) The Last Of Us

Once we had the idea settled, we thought to give it some structure, we want the animation to look simple and to give the gist of reading a book, however, also making it a dark story, making the characters make hard decisions and to make sacrifices. And that sometimes happy endings are sad endings as well.