Research the song and characters

The song i chose was shake it out by Florence and the Machine. I really liked the lyrics and thought i could come up with a really interesting narrative around them. The lyrics that i chose was "so here's to drinks at the end of my road"," looking for heaven, found the devil in me" and the chorus "its hard to stand with a  devil on your back so shake him off". I initially imagined a narrative where a forest guardian is fighting a shadow within the forest. It was suggested to me that i start research into animals that could be seen as both a bad and good influences on a forest.

One of the animals that i thought of was a deer. From my own memories deer had always been seen as the guardian of the forest with examples like Bambi,


or Snow White and the Huntsman,


So i though creating a character based on a deer would be an ideal choice. I started looking of negative impacts of deer on the forest and found that they actually have a very negative impact on New Zealand forests. On the Department of Conservation page it lists deer as game and pest.
 The following paragraph was found on there and outlines the effect deer have -

Deer cause damage to native forests by feeding on forest plants, trees and seedlings. By targeting these plants, deer can change the composition of the forest understorey.

When deer populations get too large, favourite plants like schefflera, broadleaf, three-finger, hen and chicken fern and lancewood are all but removed from the ground tier in forest understoreys. Plants like alpine buttercup, Spaniard grass and tall tussocks are damaged by deer in subalpine habitats.

In New Zealand, deer have no natural predators (apart from hunters) and apart from occasional instances of bovine Tb, are relatively healthy. Whilst red deer and sika compete where their ranges overlap, none of the other deer species in New Zealand are competing for food." - http://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/animal-pests/animal-pests-a-z/deer/