Romance Told Through Animation!

My initial genre research piggybacked off of two popular animated series:  Arcane and The Owl House. I used my inspiration and knowledge from these series to learn more about presenting same sex love interests and characters in media. 

I started by using the shows to drive ideas for the character development in our film. Both shows had a way of portraying their evolving characters and their developing relationships at the same time. I find it will be difficult to represent our characters (who are just meeting) in the same intimate scenario.

Amity (left) and Luz (right)

Both stories used the "opposites attract" trope while forming the relationships between their characters, though they also tied the characters' similarities together effectively. In The Owl House, the two start as enemies, as Amity at first resents Luz for being human rather than a witch from the Boiling Isles. Throughout the show both characters are tied together through their journeys of self discovery, as they both struggle to feel accepted amongst their family and their peers.

Caitlyn (left) and Vi (right)

We see a similar story in Arcane that we see in The Owl House:  the two characters (Vi and Caitlyn) both come from different places and end up discovering themselves through each other. They both start off as relatively closed-off characters, both basing everything they do in their lives off their own goals (Caitlyn's being to serve others and bring justice to people who deserve it, and Vi to find her sister and protect her home). When their paths intertwine, both of them open up and change with each other. Their goals shift from protecting the cities they come from to protecting and loving each other.

Though their romantic relationship is never truly verified the way Luz and Amity's is in The Owl House, their connection is illustrated strategically enough to where the audience is enticed by their developing relationships. This is something we want to mimic in our film, though doing so will be inherently difficult. One, these shows break apart the development of their characters through a series of episode, and we only have 2 minutes to establish the start of a building relationship with our film. Also, given our plot, it will be difficult to establish both characters individually (as the shows mentioned both do) because they're both meeting in the same location at the start of our film.

I will include discussions of these complications in future blogs, but for now I will focus on the research behind the original ideas for the film. So, stay tuned!