'The Little Mermaid' Research and mood boards
I began my research by looking into the two most famous versions of The Little Mermaid story. One by Hans Christian Andersen and the adaptation of his story by Disney. Both of these stories show the attempts of the little mermaid to get a soul of her own as mermaids don’t have one. However, the adaptation is more kids friendly while the original is more brutal and shows that not everything always goes as planned. Regardless of the sacrifices, the mermaid is willing to make.
The differences in these stories
The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen (1836)
-The little mermaid is interested in human culture.
-One day, she saves a prince and falls in love with him.
-She makes a deal with a witch. She gives her tongue in exchange for legs. She got three days to marry the prince. Otherwise, she will dissolve into seafoam.
-She meets the prince, who treats her like a pet rather than a love interest.
-The prince is getting married to another woman.
-The sisters of the little mermaid trade their hair for a magical knife and try to persuade her to kill the prince so she can turn back into a mermaid.
-The little mermaid turns into a seafoam; however, she turns into one of the wind spirits. She has to fulfil 300 years of good deeds to get a soul.
Disney’s adaptation of The Little Mermaid
-The little mermaid is interested in human culture.
-One day, she saves a prince and falls in love with him.
-She makes a deal with a witch and gives her voice in exchange for legs. She has to kiss her true love. If she fails, she will belong to the witch.
-She meets the prince who falls in love, but the witch turns into a human to sabotage their relationship.
-The witch’s plan fails, and the little mermaid gets her voice back.
-She is getting married to a prince.
Mood boards
Environment
Before coming to conclusions and writing a story, I created a few mood boards to show my ideas and thoughts. As a group, we came out with various ideas for the story. At first, we came up with the idea of a prince being a depressed rich guy who is trying to commit suicide but ends up being saved by a mermaid. The story would end with them falling in love and dying together in the sea.
I created a mood board with sea views, rocks and boats as an inspiration for the surroundings and colour palette.
As we were developing this idea, we have realised this story became a bit too depressing and dark. So we removed the idea of the prince trying to commit suicide. My group loved this colour palette with shades of blue and assigned me to be responsible for the beginning of the comic. I liked the idea as I wanted to make an establishing shot on the island with Japanese architecture.
Story and mood
The modern versions of this story are well known. However, the stories about mermaids from Japan go way back to 619. The story says that the mermaid was captured in japan and kept in a fish tank to entertain the empress. The way how the royalty treated mermaids back then is very similar to how the Prince from The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen treated the mermaid.
Based on the key events in the story and the dark mood, I created a mood board. It shows the trouble the mermaid had to go through and the tragic ending. My group and I decided that we should embrace these key points of the original story. We also wanted to make some changes to where the story had a place. Inspired by old Japanese legends and stories about mermaids, we decided our story should take place in Japan.
Cultural differences & the contrast between land and a sea
In the original story, the little mermaid was fascinated by the people living on the island and their lifestyle. As a group, we came up with the idea of creating a contrast between the land and the sea. Under the sea there will be old Japanese culture, and mermaids are going to wear similar clothing to traditional Japanese outfits called kimonos. The land on the other hand will be a modern world with people dressed differently from the mermaids.
I made this mood board for inspiration to show various lengths and types of these traditional outfits. However, the design of the Kimono is so long that it would cover up the whole tail of the mermaids, and it may look hard to swim in it. When designing the mermaids, I will probably limit the outfit to only the robe and make it half the length.
My next mood board show the process of exploring different shapes and structures of Japanese architecture. I have researched the most famous and recognisable buildings. Since the establishing shot it's going to be a view on an island, I decided to keep it simple as a silhouette of the city.
The grey shade I used for these silhouettes it's a shade of blue from the previous mood board. I think this dark shade goes well with the light blue sea and will create a nice contrast.
There are many beautiful traditional Japanese hairstyles, and I would like to experiment with these and make sure each mermaid has a bit different hairstyle. to make each of them recognizable.
Each of these hairstyles is slightly different from another but got one thing in common. The bigger or smaller hair bun is beautifully decorated with various hair accessories.
I will definitely want to collaborate on the designs of the outfits with other group members and see what they would like to add.
Inspiration
While researching information about mermaids in the library, I came across a CD called Visual Storytelling by Iain McCaig. In the video, the artist demonstrates his technique of designing characters through drawing into a silhouette and developing texture and shape. Iain also shows how he is using shapes such as squares, triangles and circles to determine the type of character he creates. It is the same technique I learned and used in my previous project and I will definitely experiment with it to develop character design for this project.
In this video, he also explains he had to research exotic fish in order to be able to create characters with fish features. His work helped me to understand the anatomical structure of fish like characters, however, in my work, I wanted to relate to Japan and its culture which, I discussed with my group later on while designing the mermaids.
