[PERSONAL] The Robot Idea

I've been thinking about what sort of idea I would like to make for my practice project, I had been thinking for a while that I would like to do a silent 2D digital animation about an alien robot crash landing in a rural forest on earth and having to repair his ship with the help of a boy scout. I wanted to try and convey reaction through a sort of "robot" character without speech or emotion, while also being a double act with another character who would be highly emotional. I had started the character designs for the robot:

I wanted to create a tall looking robot, designed to look like someone who could pilot a ship, I thought about having a smaller looking robot to convey an innocent look, scared of the new world he has crashed into and maybe have a couple of jokes about having stubby arms trying to pick up parts of the ship, but I thought that having a robot who is capable of doing everything correct and just wants to fix his ship would make it more interesting when I introduced the scout boy character. I was inspired by films similar to the Iron Giant with a mix of Lilo and Stitch and Pikmin; crash landing on earth and using the help of the planets inhabitants to get back home. I like the concept of "alien being" meets "human child" as I find it to be a nice match up, considering they are both fairly innocent and unsure still unsure of the world.

Above you can see the robot designed in full detail, I had not chose a colour for the robot however I did experiment with a few colour combinations. I am very happy with the designs as I feel I could have had fun animating the robot, especially in the scenario I would put him in, below you can see the first page of the storyboard draft:

I chose to step away from this idea however, because I didn't feel it represented what I wanted to research, that being "the decline of 2D digital and traditional animation". I want to create something which backs up my research, and I thought of a brilliant way to do so. I enjoyed the robot idea and I may return to it one day in the future, but for now I will move forward with my second practice idea.