Animals of Farthing Wood

It is safe to say that this animation has had the biggest impact on me as a child and has stayed with me till this day. As I embark upon developing my personal professional career in animation, I can't help but look back and analyse why this animation had such an impact upon me...

When I continuously watched the series I was about 4 years old, being so young I hardily understood most of what was going on but I got the gist of the story. What Animals of Farthing Wood did, was it showed explicitly through the medium of animation the horror we cause to the many habitats and lives of animals with our machinery. It also showed you the reality of nature, the circle of life, not everything is pretty and perfect, things die. Nothing was sugar coated like animations nowadays, for example one scene thats really stayed with me till this day was this one;

Where all the baby mice are brutally murdered by a bird as they are lodged onto thorns. I remember thinking... They aren't dead.. they are going to come back to life right? Like Disney. Like every other animation. Unfortunately that wasn't the case and it really effected me, so much so that I remember it  now at nearly 21 years old, as clear as day. I've been trying to think if this is good or not, considering animations nowadays which don't show content like this I can't help seeing it as a negative aspect, but I personally think introducing children to the real world, instead of through sugar coated lenses is the best way to go.

Animals of Farthing wood was renowned for causing controversy through the medium of animation, showing scenes such as this, and having main protagonists and characters get killed and endure the hardships of life. 

Looking back, what I also love about this animated series was the anthropomorphism present within the character design. 

The badgers white fur was used to represent old grey hair of an old man. With old age comes wisdom, and this is heavily presented in Badgers character, he was always there to give words of wisdom and acted as a grandfather caring figure to everyone.

As a child I fell in love with the character Vixen. Her longish maine in comparison to Fox demonstrating anthropomorphically and stereotypically long female hair, along with elongated eyelashes flirtatious shaped eyes. I wanted to be her, she was a strong, brave independant female, a great influence for young girls to aspire to. She even teaches Fox some things, one of the strong male protagonists.