Introducing Ember<em>Like all phoenices, Ember is highly intelligent and a fierce protector of her territory, but she is loyal and affectionate to those of pure heart.</em>
The past week dear reader has been one where a lot of the threads I’ve been pulling on and working with for months have unexpectedly woven themselves together - this happens to me from time to time and I love it!
I don’t know whether on some subconscious level I’ve been gradually working towards something all along and I only see it after the fact or whether it’s just a coincidence that I can overanalyse to create a story that makes sense of it all.
Who knows, either way this is what I’ve been up to since I last wrote to you.
Burning Out - threads 1 & 2
To start my potentially overanalysed narrative and before I introduce you to Ember I first need to tell you the story behind her.
As I mentioned in my previous journal entry I had been trying to figure out how to incorporate a phoenix into our first episode in the back of my brain for quite a while. The reason for this is because the symbolism of a phoenix is something that I resonate with very strongly and it is also an important part of the story of Ayane Studios. Here’s why;
The phoenix is a symbol of renewal, transformation, triumph over adversity and the strength to start anew.
This is pertinent to me because to date I have experienced four burnouts. The first of which happened in the summer of ’99 (almost a song in that) while the rest have come in quick session in 2018, 2022 and 2024. Each time I have had to find a way to put myself back together from the ashes and reinvent myself. With each reinvention I feel like I have got closer to the real version of me, to my inner flame.
It was in the wake of my 2018 burnout that the first embers of my long held dream of being an animator began to rekindle. This is why I designed a phoenix logo for Ayane Studios. It is also why it was so important to me to have a phoenix in our first official Ayane Studios animation.
The idea that I had after our beautiful walk in a special forest last month (see my previous journal post if this makes no sense!) was to replace the planned drone footage of the Vale of Araluen in episode 1 with footage of a phoenix out on a surveillance sortie of the Vale, checking that all was well. This meant I could still introduce the The Vale of Araluen to the viewer, but through a character interacting with it rather than the more passive drone footage… this idea really excited me on lots of levels including the scoring opportunities it presents us with in future episodes, so I have been developing Ember ever since.
I knew I wanted to make her more of an elegant protector than a fearsome creature and to give her a story that put her in the ‘misunderstood creature’ category. But I also wanted to respect both the ancient mythology and modern lore associated with phoenices… so cross her at your own peril, you have been warned.
Ember’s story
Like all phoenices, Ember is highly intelligent and a fierce protector of her territory, but she is loyal and affectionate to those of pure heart. As such she has taken it upon herself to fly daily surveillance sorties to check that all is well within The Vale. It is one of these flights that we will join her on.
For millennia phoenices have been hunted for both their tears and their ashes which, when combined, create a powerful healing elixir capable of curing anything including death. As such there are very few left in the world and we are lucky to have Ember here in The Vale as these birds are incredibly picky when choosing their nesting sites.
Their greatest form of defence is not their flames as most would assume, but their song. The haunting and ethereal song of a phoenix can manipulate the emotions and feelings of all who hear it, capable of providing comfort to those in need, or instilling fear in those that mean to do it or those it loves harm.
The sad irony is that Ember and her fellow phoenices would happily give people some of their tears and ashes to help folk and their loved ones, if only they thought to ask… especially if it was in exchange for some myrrh - phoenices love to perfume their fiery nests with it.
The idea for Ember’s story came at a time when I was doing a lot of work trying to unravel and understand the underlying reason why I keep burning out… something I’m pleased to say that after a lot of research and reading I have been able to attain. It is the silver lining that has come out of what has been a pretty turbulent couple of months for me personally. The hard work starts now with trying to retrain myself with much better habits and patterns that includes learning how to not feel guilty for setting boundaries… wish me luck.
Drawing - thread 3
If you have read my March journal entry you will know that I’ve been working on developing a sketching habit and that I’ve been enjoying it very much. Well it has come in very handy over the last week as it meant that I was in a much better place to start creating Ember’s character concept art. Which has been another very important lesson learned, the importance of making it as easy as possible to create and to make time for the things that contribute to that process. It’s so easy to give our precious time away to the wrong things in this noisy world…
I did a bit of research before starting with my scribbling - here is a brief summary of elements that I’m drawing on;
Pliny the Elder (23 - 79) stated in his ‘Naturalis Historia’ that a phoenix is as large as an eagle, and has a gleam of gold around its neck while all the rest of it is purple, apart from the tail which is blue and picked out with rose coloured features, the throat is picked out with tufts and it has a feathered crest adorning its head.
While Lactantius (250 - 325) said that its eyes were blue like sapphires and that its legs were covered in yellow gold scales with rose coloured talons.
I also found out that one possible root for its name comes from a dye that was used by the Phoenicians which was a reddish, purple.
So here are my initial sketches for Ember;
She is a fusion of lots of different birds (see below for some of my reference images) and while I’ve tried to keep loosely to the conventional wisdom of what a phoenix looks like, I also wanted to create my own version.
As mentioned above mythology dictates that a phoenix is the size of an eagle, with peacock-like feathers and features. So these are two of the elements I’ve kept, but Ember is more swallow-like, for the simple reasons that I love them (due to having some very happy memories associated with them) and that it felt like it fitted the elegant rather than fearsome criterion.
There is also a hint of Artic Tern in the profile of the wings, tail and beak. While most depictions of a phoenix show them with huge Peacock-esque tails I wanted to play with that a bit, because those sorts of tails aren’t very conducive to the aerial acrobatics I’d like Ember to be able to do - Peacocks aren’t exactly known for their flying prowess. I have a cunning plan that will mean that in flight it will still look like she has a long tail, but it will be achieved by different means…provided I can figure out how to do what I have in mind! - I really didn’t expect to be using my engineering degree for this project!
I’ll let you decide whether you think I’m reaching by connecting these three threads with my narrative, but I’ll sign off this journal entry by saying that I don’t really believe in coincidences :) …
Thank you for reading, with love,
