Character Profiles

Pineapple the Duck is a regular orange and yellow, mindless, easy target duck. He minds his own business but terrible things happen to him. He has lost all facial emotions, he is numb to the world.

However in an alternate universe, he is a very prestigious art critic and Xavier's harsh art dealer. In both universes, him and Xavier have a complicated relationship, I suppose its destiny.

This is Xavier the Dog, in the original universe he is just a brainless green dog that seems to attack a particular yellow and orange duck every time he goes out for a walk.

In the alternate universe, he is a famous painter but he seems to have hit a bit of a block as his art dealer is coming to complain to him that he hasn't made any paintings recently and his sales have dropped. Xavier laughs and then sees a snail? No, a snake dressed as a snail...

The unknown God of dimensions. A snake who believes it is a snail for some reason. He doesn't do much apart from trudge on by across the screen and from time to time, attack the viewers so they can witness a new world they have no knowledge of. In the alternate universe, he carries a blue ball, why? Nobody knows.

Task 5

Audience Demographics

One of the most common ways of identifying a target audience is the socio-economic model.  Although this model has been in use for a very long time, it is still a useful tool in identifying a target audience. The basis for this system is level of earnings.  An AB audience, for example, is assumed to have more spending power than a CDE audience. 

A	Lawyers, doctors, scientists, managers of large-scale organisations – well paid professionals
B	Teachers, senior managers, some middle management – fairly well paid professionals (and very poorly paid teachers!)
C1	‘White collar’, junior management, bank clerks, nurses
C2	Skilled ‘blue collar’ workers such as electricians, plumbers, carpenters
D	Semi and unskilled manual workers such as drivers, post sorters
E	Students, the unemployed, pensioners

Audience profiling

There are many other ways that an audience can be segmented or profiled.  Whenever a TV advertiser is producing a commercial, they will always take care to identify the target audience as accurately as possible.  After all, if the audience is identified and targeted well, the product is likely to be successful!  That is why audience is considered a key consideration – because it is fundamental to the planning and shaping of an advertisement.

Audiences can be segmented in other ways as well as the socio-economic model above:

• Age
• Gender
• Demographic (where the audience live)
• Profiling (this is often done by advertisers to identify ‘types’ of consumers)
• Values, attitudes and lifestyles (in other words the types of products which are likely to appeal to those with these values, attitudes and lifestyles.

Watch a series of adverts and identify as accurately as possible the target audience for each, provide a link and give explanations to back up your conclusions about why the advert appeals to the specific demographic.

1 – O2’s ‘Live the Good Life’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5wnXT7Su7Q

In the advert, you see a cat is motivating a crowd of people to live the good life. The slogan is ‘Be More Dog’. I think the demographics range from B to C1 because when you look at the people in the crowd, they are generally older than what a new young intern is. Basically all of them are in, what appears to be, office work clothes. This is a room full of people who have hit their midlife crises in their early to late 30’s and O2 is taking advantage of that. How? By making O2 look more ‘hip’ and ‘fresh’. More active and motivated. Cats are generally seen as lazy and nothing exciting appears to happen to them, something the bored office white collar worker can relate to. By seeing this relatable talking cat that has reinvented itself, apparently, through O2 Priority, it helps to promote the product. At one point, a balding man jumps up out of his seat and rejoices the fact that he has downloaded O2 Priority on his phone. Another subject to relate to.

O2 Priority offers great deals such as having lunch for £1 or getting tickets before general release. People who are interested in this are either money conscious, parents who have kids that like concerts/gigs and generally just buy their love, or both. Or maybe they are childless and lead an uneventful life and they think “Oh, since I have O2 Priority, I might as well get these tickets to see this band I never heard off just to get out the house. Man, the mortgage for this place is killing me. Good thing I can eat a decent lunch for just £1”

2 - Zara Woman SS15

https://vimeo.com/1219011533

This is a campaign ad for the spring/summer collection for ZARA in 2015. In the video, you see that the girls all have dead straight hair as they dance awkwardly to drum and bass electronica. This ad is appealing to everyone in the fashionista world who are quirky and stoic just like the models used. Zara being a rather popular and seeming middle class amongst the high street, I imagine that the demographics of this ad are B/C.

The reason why I think this is because they are popular amongst the young and hip who happen to work in relatively  educated jobs. Another point would be the casual wear clothes look a bit like office clothes, but obviously, more casual. Their actual office clothes look like they could cut a man because they look so sharp.

Advert Presentation

Final Animation + Evaluation

So the characters are called Pineapple and Xavier, the dog being Xavier and the duck being Pineapple. The 'snail' (actually a snake that believes it is a snail) is unnamed as it is something akin to a God. The reason for this is because as it attacks the camera, it has the ability to transport to a different dimension, hence why suddenly everyone was wearing hats. It's a universe where the hat you are wearing is basically your identity.

I believe my animation went very well because I thought my characters were well made even with limiting resources to make them out of, others I have asked also thought the same thing. However I think I could have put more effort into making Xavier, who was originally a dinosaur. When I had to make the animation, I done it in about 3 days, each day I had to start at a different camera angle so I can make it look smooth because I couldn't reset the camera like how it was the day before, clearly this worked as people wasn't able to see where each new day started. This also adds to my variety of camera angles, making it a bit more interesting to watch.

During the editing, I had a completely different idea on what I wanted the sound effects to be but I didn't have much time to go and record my own sound effects, so I made do with what I could find and convert on youtube. I have this one song playing throughout the animation called "The World is a Wonderful Place", I thought it added more emphasis on how wonderfully odd this world is. In the opening, I originally wanted to use that famous space theme song but I don't know the name of it, so I used the sound of what comets apparently sound like. Being still space theme, it still done the job I wanted.

I think what could have made my animation better is if I did go and put the extra effort in making my own sound effects, especially for Pineapple. If I did, I could have really brought the character alive with the more emotional content of a real voice. I would have obviously made noises that could somehow relate to a duck in anyway, but could still convey emotional contents in it. Another thing that could have improved my animation is if I explained the backstory within the animation as well, as people I have shown who didn't know what the backstory was found it confusing but still entertaining. Although nobody didn't mention it, I thought Pineapple's voice during the argument between him and Xavier could have been more thought out, however, it is very hard to find angry duck noises on the internet even with how full of content it is. The reason for this is because I couldn't find anything more appropriate or long enough, so I had to repeat the audio I had already had.

All in all, my animation is smooth and entertaining for an amateur and it has a certain charm about it too.

Cutout Animation

A short cutout animation created by Malwina, Patrycja and I.

We created this by cutting out pictures from newspapers and arrange them in a way that we could make a story with no particular plot line.