At this point I have written a treatment of my animation. Some things might still change but I think it’s a pretty final general outline of the story.

Additionally, I attended a lecture from a Holocaust survivor yesterday. It was particularly interesting and relevant to me due to the child perspective of his story and also the focus on emotional aspects as he was too young at the time to understand the politics and such. He also spoke briefly about his work in educating people about the Holocaust and I found it very interesting that he said that he had to make a small joke now and then and tell his story quite lightheartedly, despite the pain he still feels, to keep an audience and to convey it in an emotionally manageable way (for him and his audience). I think this is something I can keep in mind with my work.

In terms of my actual work, one thing I’m struggling with is a title but this will come in time and it could really be one of the last things I do. Another struggle, or concern, I have is that with using animals I’m not sure exactly how much I want to incorporate human things. By this I mean there is a train in the story and a house; these kind of have to be included but do the animals wear clothes? Or use guns? There are really three ways of incorporating human objects with anthropomorphism: 1) animals are aware of human things but they are human things and humans exist and use them e.g. Watership Down, 101 Dalmations; 2) Humans don’t exist but things still do and in this case are created and used by the animals in place of people, including everything from vehicles to houses to clothes e.g. My Little Pony, Disney’s Robin Hood; 3) Humans exist with their things but animals have their own equivalents or have adapted human things into their own, particularly with clothes/accessories/etc. e.g. Chicken Run, Aristocats.

I think the best for mine would be the second choice. I think this is the most easily relatable option for children and also I don’t really want humans to exist at all within the universe of my animation – consider it really as an ‘alternate’ history where the same thing happened but with animals, as with Robin Hood which also, basically, retells a historical story just with animals in place of people.