First 3 fable choices

From looking around at the amount of fables that are out there (Aesop was a busy boy) I have found and chosen the main three fables I would like to look into, each for their own reasons. for my animations, I would like to animate them in abstract form with the viewer trying to figure out which fable it is.

The boy who cried wolf

I have chosen the boy who cried wolf as one of my final 3 ideas because there are so many great ways to illustrate the message of this fable.

If i chose this fable as my final choice, I would probably rely more on animation to get the message across, so I would choose to design and create a simple scene with simple characters with some form of quirky background music. The characters wouldn't even probably talk, they would perhaps just do grunts and whines, similar to Morph animations and other early Aardman animations for example. For this I would really have to do a lot of research on how to portray emotion through body language, so showing the "boy" in this scene, showing the difference between how his body language is when he's faking it to when he actually is stuck in the particular situation I choose how his body will show panic or fear. Also animating the emotion of the characters who fall for his tricks, how angry or annoyed will they act each time? How to animate them moving swiftly to the scene? How to animate them when they give up and don't come to his help when he truly requires it.

So many interesting questions for this one and perhaps this one would require for me to take photos of people in positions they personally would assume if they were to feel each emotion/action. I will require in order for this animation to work successfully and be engaging to the viewer without portraying any emotion facially (for a simple model to animate I will probably stick to the classic morph style character but without any facial features).

EDIT: If I did do the boy who cried wolf, I probably will add simple facial features, thinking about it you could do some really good close ups of his panicked expression when he truly is up the creek without a paddle.

The Dog and the Shadow

For people unfamiliar with this fable, it's about a dog crossing over a bridge that spans over a stream and the dog has a piece of meat in it's mouth. As the dog is going about his business, it sees it's shadow and mistakes it for a dog with a larger piece of meat, it growls at it's own reflection/shadow (certain interpretations of the fable vary, some say the dog looks into the pond and sees a reflection and others say it's a shadow casted by sunlight onto the bridge) and attacks this other "dog" to try and take it's meat but in doing so loses it's own piece of meat.

This fable would be challenging I would say on a par to the boy who cried wolf but in a different way. To put across the message of this fable would require a lot more visual work with more work on use of various lighting techniques if I chose to convey it as a shadow or techniques to make reflective water if I chose to make it a reflection. Plus, if I chose water I would have to look into various effects for when the meat falls into the water to get ripples on the water's surface, splashback and not to mention to make it look realistic through how the heavy the meat is and how quickly/slowly it will sink deeper into the body of water, would it rotate as it sinks? How different would the colouring of the meat look?
Camera angles in this one would also be very interesting, what would be a great camera angle I thought of just now would be to have the camera positioned looking up at the dog once the meat has fully sunk to the bottom to show the expression of the dog's face through the rippling of the water with perhaps the moral slowly merging into the viewers view before the scene fades out.

The Grasshopper and the Ants

This fable would be an interesting one to do in an abstract form. The story is basically about a carefree grasshopper who's quite happy chilling out and singing away to himself when he sees an ant pulling a large ear of corn. The grasshopper asks the ant what is he doing? The ant replies basically he's getting ready for winter by stocking up on food so they won't go hungry. The grasshopper laughs and says that there is plenty of food so why worry. When winter arrives the grasshopper is dying of hunger because he didn't prepare for the time when there won't be any food and basically the ant rubs it in and says told you so (as they all do in Aesop's fables).

For this one I had an interesting idea of doing for example, one guy working really hard and not really going anywhere short term (e.g. social networking, partying getting to know pwople etc), he just works in his room non stop and another guy who is always out socialising and partying and not really caring where his life is going and then showing in the end say for example the geeky guy driving past the "party man" in a really swanky looking car who didn't have any aspirations or goals to get anywhere and the viewer then sees the party man as a tramp, this would be an interesting abstract one to do but probably out of the three, this is my least favourite choice.

Looking at what i have written for my idea for this could also be slightly changed and then implemented into the moral for the tortoise and the hare in some respects. The guy who took it slow and didn't seem to be going anywhere got what he wanted in the end.

I will spend the weekend thinking and researching on probably The Dog and The shadow and the boy who cried wolf as these two ideas, i would really like to look at what I could do with these and then I will decide on my final choice.