Further Ideas generation

 My theme is called "Purple Haze", and I have already established that I want to create 6 characters. I want my six characters to be a family that could be main characters in a cartoon for children. 

I have created this mind map with different meaning of the color.

I am going to research the color itself even more in the further steps, however for now this mind map is enough to generate ideas. Since purple is a color of royalty and luxury I decided that my 6 characters are going to be a royal family. 

Another word in the theme is Haze and I was not sure what was the meaning of this word, therefore I decided to google it. "Haze - something such as heat or smoke in the air that makes it less clear, so that it is difficult to see well"(Cambridge Dictionary, 2021). I have found out that haze is also a type of marihuana, however I do not think that would be very appropriate to incorporate in characters meant for children. Haze is something similar to a fog, and fog is mostly associated with mysteries or horrors. Generally fogs are seen as scary and full of secrets. Color purple is also often seen as a color of mystery therefore this links very well together.

I think it would be great if I created not only the characters but also the concept around them. For now, I know that I want to create a royal family made of 6 creatures, preferably 5 main creatures and their pet. 

One of my inspirations will definitely be this cartoon called "Little Princess" that I watched when I was little. 

"Little Princess" (n.d.)

I think "Little Princess" has very eye-pleasing characters which are just friendly looking. I want my characters to be eye-pleasing and interesting enough for everyone to just follow their story, however I do not want my characters to be human. I want them to create an extraterrestrial atmosphere, a little bit like in Odilon Redon's colorful works. I want to make them almost magical but still friendly looking. I think "Little Princess" is a great reference for the friendliness, I really need to keep in mind that the characters are meant for children and they can't be too scary or too serious, because then they would not be desirable by children.

I think the best target audience would be between 6 and 9 years old and I will have to research cartoons targeted for this age range, to see what kids this age like the most. I think ages from 6 to 8 are great because they are capable of understanding a little more complicated concept, but they are still into cartoons. It can be a little tricky with older kids because somewhere around the age of 10, kids like to transition to watching live action series for children. 

What I established so far:

• Royal family
• Not human creatures
• Mystery involved

I think involving mystery can be a really good idea since there is a series of books for children and they are about detectives and those books get a lot of attention from my target group. The Whodunit Detective Agency is a Swedish series of books for children and even I read those books when I was younger. I think it was the fact that there were mysteries that got me so involved in it. 

The Whodunit Detective Agency: The Mummy Mystery (2015)

I really disliked reading when I was little, therefore if there was a book that I actually read, it must have had something special to keep me interested. I want the concept of my cartoon to be very interesting but not too complicated, because complicated concept can make children confused and that is exactly the opposite of what I am going for. 

What I also need to keep in mind is that I only create a concept - not a storyline. The characters are for a cartoon and children usually do not watch episodes in order, therefore each episode needs to make sense on its own. This is why I just need a main concept that would just exist in every episode. 

Reference List:

Cambridge Dictionary (2021) Haze. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.