The Fox and The Crow

I decided to choose this short story as I thought it lent itself to a frozen moment as there is one crucial moment in the story. The frozen moment I chose is when the crow drops the cheese when he opens his mouth to sing. I felt that there were very strong emotions that could be illustrated – the look of  anticipation and victory on the fox’s face, a the look of horrible realisation on the crow’s face or the opposite – the complete lack of understanding that he has been tricked. It is also not a static image – the cheese is dropping, the crow is opening his mouth and the fox is preparing to eat.

Therefore, I felt that it was very important to capture the right expressions. I looked at manga, where exaggerated facial expressions are a key part of the style. With regards to the style, I knew I wanted a very animated style. I thought this would be the best way to create strong character designs that would carry a lot of expression and effectively tell the story: expressions like the sneaky malicious nature of the fox, and the dopey naive expression of the Crow.

As I was creating a single image, it had to be interesting and hold the viewer’s attention. However, it needed to be clear and convey the frozen moment. I decided to make it an upshot, alongside the tree. I thought the most important element was the cheese falling and the expression of the fox. To emphasize the cheese, I knew that I couldn’t have it be drawn in front of anything or I would risk it being lost in the image, so I decided I would have to frame it around the fox and the tree to have it be against the sky where it would stand out. A benefit of using an up shot is there will be no ground in the image. It would just be the key elements shown. To make the other important part of the image clear, being the fox, I decided to have the fox be in the foreground. This would make the character larger and create a strong focal point to the image.

I wanted to show the sense of movement, and did this not just through the drawing of the cheese, but also the leaves falling nearby.