WWF - Visual Development

        Having received some encouraging feedback from our informal pitch, Rebecca and I began to discuss the final breakdown of the report. The brief specifies a maximum of eight presentation slides as an alternative to an animation, so we needed to select a select few key strands of information from the Living Planet Report, as otherwise our slides would be overwhelmed with information. By concentrating on the most important messages, we should be able to make the report more accessible to the target audience. 

We came to settle on the following areas of the report:

• The drastic decline of animal populations in the last 40 years.
• The fact that we are eating into our natural capital, making it difficult to sustain future generations.
• We are cutting trees faster than they can mature, harvesting fish faster than the oceans can replenish, and emitting more carbon dioxide than the forests and oceans can absorb.
• Human well being depends on natural resources, such as water, arable land, fish, wood and pollination.
• We need to live and prosper in harmony with nature, not at its expense.

These strands of information should be more than enough to occupy eight presentation slides.

        While we had already explored potential compositions in relation to some of these ideas, we needed to draft out ideas on how best to visually represent those which we had not previously explored. Rebecca and I discussed these ideas together, and once we had a clear idea of what assets would need finding and/or making, I began that task while Rebecca sketched out the concepts we had discussed:

        For 'Declining Animal Populations', we considered changing my initial concept of showing animals around a globe, to just the animals' faces, or indeed a globe made of the animals' faces. Yet as we had received positive feedback regarding my sketch during the informal pitch, we decided there was no need to change it. It may be simple, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, so long as the composition clearly communicates the message. We felt that it would be beneficial to have the two globes (representing animal populations in 1970 and now) on the same slide, to emphasis the shocking and drastic decline. 

        To best represent the fact that we are 'Eating into our Natural Capital', we chose again to use one of my original concepts: depicting the Earth as an apple (or indeed a plum, peach etc.), something which can be consumed and eaten away, as humanity consumes the planet's natural resources. There is also the added connotation that fruit is delicate, fragile and transient, which corresponds with the impression given by the Living Planet Report, that our planet is in a delicate state of balance, easily destroyed by our own actions. 

        We had not considered ideas for 'Deforestation' at the time of our initial pitch, so this slide we approached as a blank slate. As many of our existing concepts centred around an image of the world (albeit depicted with fruit), we decided that it would be sensible to use this image as a recurring theme throughout the presentation slides, to keep a sense of continuity, but also reflect the importance of the planet, which is an integral message in the Living Planet Report. To further the continuity, we discussed arranging over-sized trees around the outside of the globe, diminishing in size until they are mere stumps, with a simple lumberjack figure cutting the last few of the 'big' trees.

        The only slide which does not carry on the motif of the central globe is the one for 'Over Fishing'. This composition was one of Rebecca's initial concepts, which was included at the informal pitch. Again, it received positive feedback, in just its sketched form, so Rebecca and I had high hopes that it would be even more appealing when composed of our 3D assets. We discussed attempting to incorporate the globe into the composition, perhaps in the net along with the fish (depicting the planet as just another resource to exploit), but in the end we decided it was unnecessary, and the lack of globe would not disrupt the flow between slides.

        We changed very little in the 'Carbon Emissions' slide, as again it had received positive feedback at the peer review. However, we did have some concerns that in comparison to the other slides, the sketched hands may appear somewhat flat. I had considered the possibility that we could construct a pair of smoke hands out of cotton wool or uncarded wool (similar to the woolen smoke effects used in Fantastic Mr Fox). 

        'Live & Prosper in Harmony With Nature' was perhaps the most troublesome composition to decide upon. It was a fine line between conveying 'harmony' and the whole thing becoming somewhat twee and saccharine. While the concepts here deviate from the central globe theme, we later decided that it would be better to be consistent to that template in the final slide, similar to 'Human Well Being' but even more vibrant. We did however take inspiration from the concept on the bottom right. While many of our globes were by necessity rather sparse, we decided to flood the last one with the animals, plants and other positive assets we had previously used, to depict the possibility of a flourishing, rather than floundering planet.

        We hope that the information we have selected to present will form a coherent narrative, with a strong and clear argument in favour of changing our treatment of planet Earth.