Colour Palettes

I was thinking of having my animation in black and white but I was considering having a little dull colour in there too.
I found these samples that I quite like. 

The red next to the black is way too bright. I want to have subtle colour -If I do have colour at all.

More animation Inspriation

Emotional Eyes:

In the anime Attack on Titan, I really like how when the characters get upset or emotional how their eyes shake and how their tears form. I want to achieve this in my animation also. 

(Episode one contains spoilers in this video...) Go to 1.45, 2.03, 3.20 for emotional eyes. 

Storyboard changes

Feedback from my tutor Claire 

After Claire and I discussed my two storyboards we decided to rearrange and add some things to the second one.

I had a feeling that not showing the full main character was not a good idea so we added an establishing shot of her so we can see how much of a beaten down and sad character she is  (through her clothing and body language). 

New Storyboard:

Backgrounds

I would have drawn up background on paper but with my storyboards I felt like I didn't really have anything to draw. All my backgrounds I want to be quite simple but full of grungy textures and darkness. I originally wanted to achieve this by overlaying images from Google to create new ones but I feel like that might be a bit too close to the whole copyright thing. 

I created these backgrounds with Photoshop brushes and the last few with an image from Google and brushes overlaying them. 

Version 1: Darker 

Version 2: Lighter

The peeling on the left I think is too big in comparison to the size of the character will be

Version 1: Google image with Photoshop brushes overlayed

Version 2: More textures overlayed 

I created these images slightly longer than usual video dimensions because I wanted to pan across them without having to zoom into the images. These are just mock up backgrounds.

Storyboards

I didn't use the mother character too much or most of the monster characters - I used the shadow monsters mainly as the bullies.

Storyboard 1

In the second storyboard I didn't use the mother character at all. I think having more characters distracts from the story and also the visuals so I might cut her out all together.

Final Characters: Profile and Front Views

Girl (Bullied character):

The Mother: 

I wanted the mother to remain unknown. I wanted her to be seen as materialistic but stern. I felt like the outfit and her thin frame communicate this idea.

The Monster Bullies: 

Character Development

The Bully:
I experimented with angry faces and poses but found it hard to make them look childish and basically not weird. 

I thought of having the bullies portrayed at monsters and shadows rather than human children. This will add a great visual effect and make the bullying seem more scary to the viewer.

Main girl (bullied character):

I thought I had sorted this character out quite quickly but I felt like she needed more work. She also looked too much like a character already made by Tim Burton. 

I experimented further with the character face shape.

Excuse her lack of hair. I wanted to see what hair style would suit her...

I played around with hairstyles. Influenced by typical children's hairstyles.