While the details regarding the storyboarding took place, I began to sketch design ideas for the character of the piece. I went through several different design choices, along with different drawing styles, in order to achieve a broad and varied final decision.

(Above) Varied character designs, most of them not used, but some favoured and expanded on.

The idea that I decided I wanted to use for the animation was a internal, tongue-in cheek look inside the body of a person with a heart condition, or particularly unhealthy heart. The narrative would be something along the lines of; the insides of the arteries would be shown, clogged and fatty, leading to show a heart struggling to beat, with a zoom out of a troubled-looking sufferer of this heart condition.
The idea of a small representative character of the heart conditioned person was added alongside what was already thought about. The character would trudge through the fat of the artery and demonstrate the strain associated with heart conditions.

(Above) The 1st attempt at a storyboarded idea, for the animation and narrative.

The pictures to the right are taken from the 'Love Your Heart' eYeka competition page. I used their guidelines and notes to help me decide on what I wanted to produce.

Though the competition was interesting and the prize money incredibly tempting, my main focus was on completing the animation for use in a sketchbook/portfolio/show-reel.

For the first term of the 3rd (and final) year of the 'Illustration with Animation' course, I was tasked with producing my own animation, based around researched artists, businesses or competitions. After searching around the internet for various places, I came across 'eYeka', an varied competition website. https://en.eyeka.com/

Focusing on one of these competitions in particular, the 'Love Your Heart' campaign, I began developmental work for it. https://en.eyeka.com/contests/8251-love-your-heart