Project Proposal

Design Brief:-
It is said the most innocent phase in human life is the childhood. It is that stage of life when the human foundations are laid for a successful adult life. It is the phase when we are carefree, playing, fun loving......
But there are children who don’t get same kind of childhood as other children get. There are children who hate their childhood as they are scarred and tormented. There are individual and industry, who employee young innocent children. They put them to work under gruelling circumstances. They make them work for long hours; make them work in dangerous factory units; make them carry load even heavier than their body weight.
Today one of the greatest maladies spread across the world is that of child labour. This problem is not only afflicting under developed or developing nations but also developed countries.
The leading reason for this is poverty. The children either supplement their parents’ income or are the only wage earners in the family. Unfortunately, their poverty stricken way of life makes them so ruthless that they sell their children as commodities to exploitive employers.
India accounts for the second highest number where child labour in the world is concerned. Parents send their children to work so that they don’t starve and die. Child labour for such children is the only survival for them.
The question here is why parents send their children to work or sell them for money instead of sending them to school for better education.
As an artist or designer has a wide range of option for this can be worked on. I like to work on this subject, so that I can send across a message to those people who let their children or sell their children to get some income through this short animation film.

Story:-
Maya, 8yr old thin girl, the only daughter of her family lives in a small village with her father. Her father is not happy with her, when she used to play with her friends and study with them. He sells her daughter to man, named Shankar, who buys children to remove poverty for the villagers who cannot afford to look after themselves. He gets huge money for selling her daughter and he is happy for this. Maya’s father doesn’t care about it. He just smiles after looking a bag full of money.
The man takes Maya with himself and keeps her for two three days with himself and feeds her nice foods. Maya was happy as she used to get good foods to eat, but she used to be sad also at some point of time when she used to think about her dad.
She didn’t know much why she was taken away so far from home. The man said her that her father had sent her so that she could get better education. But after few days she was send to some one’s house to work there as a maid and look after their house.
She has to sweep and clean the house twice a day. She has to even wash clothes. She used to either get money sometimes to feed herself and sometimes not. If it used to be late for her to finish her work, she was allowed to stay at home, but used to get nothing to eat. She was allowed to sleep in kitchen. Sometimes she used to carry heavy weights form her own body weight. She used to get bitten up almost every day for not working properly. It was hard for her to work there. Whatever money she used to earn used to be taken by Shankar. She could hardly spend some money on herself.
She could not even sleep properly as she had many scars in her body. She almost spends a year working there but she didn’t say a few words. She used to always sit near the window during the evening time and see some children playing outside the house. After seeing other kids playing near the house even she used to dream about it and going to school. But her dream became dream only.
One day finishing all her work she was going back home during evening time. But instead of going back home she ran away and ended up taking a shed in a small school.

Research Questions:-
 To what mental and physical trauma do children go through while working at very small age?
 What different look and feel can I get in this film?
 As a designer, how will I be able to design the film and convey the message to the audience?

Approach:-
 To come up with strong storyboard to communicate effectively.
 My iterations and discussions with other people.
 The look and feel of the film in different light and mood sets.
 Composting the film by putting it all together.
 Animation skills in software while working on this project.
 To watch films and take help of people to get better ideas.

Material/Resources:-
 Paper
 Storyboarding
 Scanner
 Software (Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Audition, Maya, Adobe After Effects)
 People (Faculty, Friends) for guidance and feedback.

Learning outcomes:-
 Explorations on animation (in software for timing, expressions)
 To communicate effectively through this film within short period of time.
 Explore medium to work for effects and animation.
 Understanding ways of communicating through visual language.