TV series Project Work
“Dear Matilda”
Amidst the chaos of the Blitz, six-year-old Matilda is evacuated to the English countryside, finding herself in the care of Ernest, an elderly man, and Dorothy, his daughter-in-law. Within the uncertainty, a glimmer of magic emerges as letters from Matilda’s lost doll, Polly, start arriving, painting vivid tales of adventure that unexpectedly brighten everyone’s wartime experience.
I was in charade of early character design and the concept art of the colourful doll’s world. I have always enjoyed character designing, as their images alone can tell a story. Through looking through archive photos and visiting the Portrait Gallery I tried to keep the characters and their environment true to the time period of WW2.
Starting from the protagonist, Matilda and Polly doll. I used contrasting colours to show the personality difference and character traits. Matilda is young, traumatised, emotional and innocent. According to the script writers’ instructions, she wears a pink bow and has brown hair to avoid stereotypes. In the beginning, i designed a range of hair styles inspired by photos of children in the 1940s. For the first stage I usually create various styles for flexible visuals. I also aimed at a casual colours in consideration of the war environment. After a range of developments, the final design had been handed to Diana to complete. ( In the first photo Matilda is labelled as Polly, which was the original name, but Polly sounds more like a doll, so we swapped the names around later on)
Polly is an adventurous, confident, mature doll who writes to Matilda about her journeys after being lost. Each letter teaches her a important lesson in life such as being patient, be empathetic, stay hopeful and eventually how to move on. In contrast with the softness of Matilda’s shapes, Polly’s character design had been crazy since the beginning. The doll quality gives animation freedom to experiment with style changes and character development. I exaggerated the ribbon on Polly to create the dolly like uncanny and bold outlines. After choosing the third one, I also tried out other colour combinations and facial expressions. As character with a lot of depth, her colour pallet represents dreams, comfort and fairy tale providing a mental escape for Matilda.
And lastly, Dorothy and Earnest. They are supposed to represent women and elderly contributions in the war. Dorothy being strong after suffering the loss of her husband Charlie to war. Earnest, the real writers of Polly’s letters, father of Charlie.
Dear Matilda is also a historical fiction aimed to inspire children with stories about courage, dealing with loss and growth. During the development some plot lines I or the other wrote have not been used, such as Polly meets the Queen and podcast with her to children (Queen Elizabeth II volunteered to train in WW2 and had podcasts telling stories to children); Polly meeting dotty the cat who bought her back to Matilda; Polly speaks with poetry rats in the Metro that began to live like humans since they are living together; Polly visiting the hospital; and Polly learning how rations stations work by going to the rat ration station.
The greatest change of all is the ending. Originally Polly was going to walk away with her last letter after finding Matilda living happily and ready to move on. This was changed to Polly sending a goodbye letter explaining to Matilda after feeling compelled to comfort more children in need of help. The montage had a lot of reference from the episodes through out. I believe that the message of this TV show, untimely is to advocate the brutality of war, and urge for peace. I added the image of the return of Charlie (Dorothy’s husband passed away during the war) for this reason.
As a writer, we can never fully capture or fully to represent the brutality of human suffering. But we must try and never stop to advocate for what is right. As a story, we can worn the others learning from the mistakes made in history, trying to avoid the next one. But as a fairy tale, I hope to at least pass on our condolences for the lost ones and give them a gentle ending, of their returns.