WMDJ - Character design

In the Why Mums Don’t Jump episode, I talk to the team behind the animated short film of the same name. A film commissioned by journalist Helen Ledwick, a podcaster and now author of the book Why Mums Don't Jump, which is breaking the taboos surrounding pelvic floor health problems after childbirth. Problems such as prolapse, incontinence and pelvic pain. How did the team take this challenging topic and turn it into a colourful and uplifting animated film? Sammy and Bonnie kick off the conversation?

Rosa Mulraney Where did the spark come from? Where did you get the idea for how to respond to this brief?

Bonnie Harris For me literally as soon as I saw Helen’s brief. Immediately, I was like, I do not care. I'm working on this project. But I was like, I will do everything in my power to make sure that I end up in a group that is doing this project.

Rosa Mulraney And what was it about the project?

Bonnie Harris I spend a lot of my time watching YouTubers, and just content creators in general that talk a lot about like sexual health and that kind of thing. So to get to work on a project that is in the kind of area that I already like, learning about. Yeah, I have to, um,

Rosa Mulraney Well, that's really inspiring to hear. So you're really motivated.

Bonnie Harris Yeah, really motivated. And then yeah, the art style, it came from Cat Pearson, because Helen already has a pre-established illustrator. So it was kind of looking at Cat's style, and then thinking, Okay, I need to learn Cat's style. And then I can make the characters in Cat's style.

Illustration by Cat Pearson

Bonnie Harris And yeah, a lot of it was just, for me, at least creating the characters, I wanted to try and create as much diversity within these few characters as I could. And that was my main goal when creating them. It wasn't obvious, but like, there was a Jewish coded character. There was a Muslim character. There were POC characters.

Character Designs by Bonnie Harris

Rosa Mulraney So where did that inspiration come from?

Bonnie Harris Just the lack of diversity in general media anyway. And because because of how diverse this issue is, anyway, why not? Why not make it a diverse thing? So it's not necessarily about meeting our diversity quota or whatever like that. It was just, there are so many people that experience this issue. Why wouldn't we make it so that as many people as possible could see themselves represented in this little one minute thirty film?

Rosa Mulraney Yeah, well, it comes across really well.

Bonnie Harris Because we had one little feedback session with Cat of just like, “I've created these characters, what are your opinions on it?” And she's just like, "Yeah, it's really good!". And then we got feedback on the colour palette as well, because Helen said that she wanted something that was a little bit less girly, and less pinks and stuff like that. So I created a colour palette that was still fitting within her theme, because her theme is quite pink and girly. So it was still fitting within the theme, but making sure that it added that kind of range of colours.

Rosa Mulraney Yeah. I mean, I particularly like the variety of character designs, and then the diversity of representation, I think, is really, really well done. So yeah, it's, it's fantastic to hear that you are able to meet a new collaborator with this illustrator who Helen already knew. So that's fantastic.

Bonnie Harris She was really excited when she saw the character signs. She was she was like, I can't believe that you guys are getting to do this. This is so cool!