First Impressions of Character Design and Story Development

When working in animation, you are often working with big budgets and limited time, neither of which you want to waste. But how do you prevent wasting these resources? One way of doing it is by using focus groups before you even hit the ground running. In this particular study, we wanted to get some preliminary research on a sports-related animated property within our target demographic, kids ages 3-9. The only elements that had been developed by the time of this study were character designs and an animated short in two versions, 2D and 3D animation. We split children into age based groups to see their thoughts on the characters and receptiveness to the story.

One tricky thing about working with children are their age- and personality- based dynamics. From year-to-year, children’s development wildly varies, and while adults can (for the most part) express their true thoughts, children often don’t have the vocabulary or emotional development to understand and express their thoughts exactly. Additionally, younger children (usually younger than 5) often can’t or won’t express themselves without their parents near them, and do not have the attention spans that older children do. While challenging, working with the children in this study group provided a lot of valuable information to help adjust the animation going forward. You can see the full report by clicking the arrows on the side of each sheet, or you can click the button below to download the report for your convenience.