Wednesday, 22 March 2017

Caritas HSBC funding Project: Teddy Beibei project

The Hong Kong Bank Foundation supports a broad o project focused on education, environment and the health/wellness in HongKong. The foundation prefers to fund specific projects rather than general funds and locally-registered organisation under Section 88 of Hong Kong's Inland Revenue Department.They consider about the objectives and proven need for the project, the outcomes, the feasibility and planning and project management also budgets and cost efficiency as well.

Caritas Lok Miu Early Education & Training Centre is a branch of Caritas Hong Kong. It successfully apply the HSBC funding and set a project of creating a series of product of a character, hoping to encourage parents to appreciate and care about the children more often. The project outline includes introducing the story of the character Beibei and produce a variety of products like stamp books and stickers and a story book that could be told to the students in every training centre.

The reason why I could got involved is because my mother is the creator of the story. She gave me an opportunity to become the illustrator of this project which I am so honoured. Before starting the character design or the plots of the story, we came up with the story together as the starting point of the project. Since the aim of this project is to raise the awareness of generating confidence in Children through supports from parents and teachers, it is also important to teach the children that they should appreciate themselves as well.

Storyline:
Beibei was an unhappy teddy because he was shy and quite. He though he did not look pretty enough and not talented enough to have any friends. However the teacher of the class noticed his strengths and good qualities and compliment about them and soon beibei's parents appreciate that too. Beibei gradually gains confidence and start helping others more and eventually became a happy teddy.

A very simple story showing the plots clearly and directly to the children and the parents. Since the clients are not just normal children but also children with special needs like the one who suffered from autism syndrome, the characters also better to be neat and expressive. I did some tests and produced the first product which is a stamp book.



I found it interesting how the staffs in the training centre did not give much feedbacks on the characters design which is so different compare to other creative work company. I guess having different kinds of clients really change my style of work also this time, unlike Bear Music Company, I am more limited by the look of the characters. I do not dislike it but it definitely had set a challenge. What is more, Lots of the characters I found it looks cute or reach the aim turned out not very popular among the staffs. The age group of the clients and the tendency of them alter the end product but at the same time since they are the professionals so I changed the designs as they told.



Try to use illustrator but I struggled...ending up using photoshop for the whole project.

There is also a lady who is in charge of contacting the printing companies and editing so I have been contacting her a lot. It is very happy to see all my illustration made into physical products. I like the idea of including animation as teaching material for education, it is likely that I would get similar job next time but animating the characters instead.


At last, it took me 2 months to finish the storybook. We had so many ideas and concept art before hand and also many corrections before reaching the final final book. I appreciate the fact that I could use my favourite painting method in photoshop and use a wide range of colours in the book. This is going to be the first book have my name on it! So thrilling just to think about it!


I want to do this job is totally due to an urge of experiencing different types of job. I also know that if this project succeed, more people in the education industry may know my name due to this book. There are continuous opportunities in this area of the industry which I would love to keep exploring especially they are educational and meaningful.

No comments:

Post a Comment