Festival Folk

For the festival my idea was to bring in some additional side characters, "the festival folk". Here's a very quick sketch which I afterwards coloured in photoshop. I was planning to put some pattern on the clothes, but left it out here, as I'm not sure how suitable that is for the animation. I will decide on that after I've done an animation test.

The festival folk should consist of many similar looking characters, made up of very simple shapes reminding of thumbs or ghosts. As I mentioned before my intention is to convey the mood of tanabata, rather than making a documentary style film on the festival, so their surreal look serves as metaphors to convey this mood and they will only appear on the festival. All the other characters will be of a more human look.

I might have them performing traditional dances or things like that. A plus of the simple design is, that it should be quite easy for animating. They will also be able to move like ghosts and doing quick movements, as they're bodyshapes are not fixed, so their dresses will remind of kimono when they open their arms. But the main characteristic of them should be being really "jolly" and happy.

There will also be more side characters outside of the festival with no specific role. They will rather appear in the background for the sake that the area feels like a normal residental area and is not completely deserted. This is the style I will be going for for them (and they will all have black/grey hair).