Unit X Research Post

Ladybird 1964

We have been given the task of creating a 30 second piece of animation based on the classic tale of Cinderella and inspired by the work of fashion designer William Wilde. The project is a live brief set by William Wilde himself, who gave us some background on his relationship with Cinderella growing up, he spoke about how one of his earliest memories of the tale was a Ladybird book from the 1960s which, although was set in a fairy tale/ renaissance era, featured many 60s haircuts and styles. He also talked about how an iconic moment, for him, in the Disney version is the image of Cinderella dressed in rags after her sister ripped her dress apart.

Latex Drama Quenn Dress -
 William Wilde

We decided to take these moments that were important to our client and design our ideas around them. Upon researching who William Wilde is and discovering that he likes to work with latex we chose to place our Cinderella into a latex dress to go to the ball. Researching 60s fashion allowed us to see the kind of dress we wanted to go for for the look of the piece, but of course then rendered in latex to fit with the client. William Wilde had said that he wanted the piece to be somewhat humorous and also did not shy away from the fact that the latex material he used was somewhat unpractical as it rips very easily. Due to this, we thought it would be funny if after being transformed from rags to her beautiful latex ball gown, that rips as soon as she moved anyway.

[JTBC2] Taming Ms. Tomboy - Vimeo

Upon further research of a 60s aesthetic that we liked, we came across pixilation style of animation to capture the poses in. To tie these back into a 1960s aesthetic we wanted to go for a colour palette which is very of the era which is very bright and contrasting with heavy uses of primary colours.

An Animation of Chloë Sevigny FW13
 - Vimeo 

paper dress up dolls that children used to play with and thought it had a nice look to it that would work well with the transformation element of Cinderella’s clothes and with the idea of maybe trying different dresses for the ball. We also found some videos that helped us visualise how we wanted the piece to look in terms of combining live action characters with a 2D environment as well as a

Fairly Odd Parents - Nickelodeon

We then set about working out a plot of our video, knowing that we wanted the focus to be on the transformation scene and to show the ripping of the dress. As such at the ball such as the ugly stepsisters be in shock at the girl walking in in a ripped dress and we could have the tagline, ‘It’s not ripped, It’s Wilde.” The stepsisters would also be rendered in the pixilation style but would be men with animated hair and makeup on to give the ugly almost pantomime look we desired. The fairy godmother however would be completely hand drawn in a style not too dissimilar from that of Fairly Odd Parents’ fairies. 

we decided to feature the fairy godmother scene and then her arrival at the ball with a ripped dress, we would have people