Blog post #3 - Knowing your audience

Covering the narrative for our Yagan project, the basis of the story is about a child going through the unknowing and difficult times of adolescence. As a child, you're basically holding the hand of your parents or caregivers. You're at an age where you are not able to do anything on your own without some sort of guidance. The child here is on his own without that guidance, this is where the wisp comes in and becomes an objective for the child. He chases after it with uneasiness and curiosity, eventually he no longer sees it as some simple matter of objective and it takes the form of a stag. The stag is representing guidance for the child, once it disappears the child whom is slightly older ends up alone again. This is the stage where kids can start going off to do their own things occasionally, because the kid has built some confidence and is not as scared as he used to be; a trail of light appears before him which he starts to follow. The passage of time plays a part in this project, the kid eventually grows up into an adult and has built the confidence to move forward on his own.

Judging by our narrative, the target audience is certainly aimed for children and young adults, the demographic being 5-25 years. I explored into the demographics a bit further and found the most recent statistics from this year. 

35% of animation viewers are aged 18-24.

40% of animation viewers are aged 25-34. (Abdalslam, 2023). 

A huge chunk of animation viewers are families with children (Abdalslam, 2023). 

As we know, young adolescence watch cartoons and animations as a means to escape from reality, which I had explained in the previous blog post referred by Sito. This can coincide with what our whole narrative is about. So I believe that this project can appeal to the right people with the target audience we are aiming for. Any families visiting Perth will be able to see the animation play at Yagan Square and relate to it, whether it was past or current experiences.

Visually, everyone is drawn to bright and bold colours, and kids have a tendency to take interest in creates. So I hope for the forest with it's glowing, mystical atmosphere, as well as the characters that are the complimentary colour to blue (being bright gold); will visually appeal to the young kids and families that appreciate 2D animation.

References:

Abdalslam. (2023, February 7). Animation Statistics, Trends And Facts 2023. Abdalslam. https://abdalslam.com/animation-statistics#:~:text=Animation%20Demographics%3A

Sito, T. (2006). Drawing the line : the untold story of the animation unions from bosko to bart simpson. University Press of Kentucky.