Nana is a restless little girl full of energy that is constantly going into her world of imagination, either to play or to overcome small obstacles in her day to day life!
Nana (2020) by Anni Paz and Jéssica Carvalho
The idea for Nana was born from sharing childhood memories between the team and noticing even having distinct backgrounds, me growing up between Portugal and Finland and Jéssica growing up in Angola. Despite having those differences there was a main aspect that was common to both of us... the creation of imaginary worlds that only made sense to us!
During various brainstorming sessions, we came up with multiple scenarios where the child's imagination could be used to overcome fears and unwanted situations or to be used as entertainment. From overcoming a fear of stairs, to not wanting to eat peas, to imagining a underwater world during bath time or creating a game to get to the dinner table. Unfortunately there were various cuts in the scenes to be able to finish the animation by the deadline.
The animation focus on an afternoon of Nana's life, from her playing in her room to eating a meal that she isn't a fan of, which sends her into an adventure where the floor is made of lava, a dinosaur comes to Nana's rescue and embark into an Indiana Jones-esc adventure to reach the most coveted treasure, a pudding.. erm, a diamond!
Inspiration and visual development
One element that was decided from the first moment was that the visual style of the animation should resemble a child's drawing and playing around with various types of paper texture. The main goal with drawing inspiration from childhood drawings was to help the viewers immersion on this world that we have created.
To keep the animation clear and create a distinction between the real world and imagination world, we decided to use only two brushes, one for the real world and another for the imagination world, as well having two distinct visual styles. The representation world is made with simple shapes and black/white aesthetics, while the representation from the imagination world is colourful, using a textured brush and using multiple paper textures.
The design for the main character, Nana, suffered various changes in the visual style as the animation evolved. It started with something more complex and progressively got simpler so it would add more meaning to the animation.
Nana is the only thing thing that remains black and white while in the imagination world, this is meant to represent the connection to the real world, since she belongs there.
Animation backgrounds
Bedroom | Bed
Bedroom | View from the bed
Bedroom | Side View
