Sloth Design (Week 06)

This is my first design for this character.

SLOTH
It is a lazy Character, therefore he has a lazy posture and long arms. His eyes are looking nowhere

Housemates’ Animal Characters (Week 05)

I been thinking about the characters in this story and I decided to make them animals from different continents: a South American Sloth (lazy and slow) a Asian Lizard (obsessive compulsive) and a African Lion

Housemates: First "episode" (Week 05)

This story has two problems: it doesn’t have a title (which is the most difficult thing for me) and it’s extremely broad. To revolve the first one I will need time, but the second one is “easy” to fix because I proposed an episodic story. Below it’s my proposal for the first story in the Housemates “universe”.

The Keys... A Sloth story

“Sloth” is ready to leave the house, it is extremely sleepy and he has a coffee in his hand. He tries to open the door but it is look.

He looks in his fur but he doesn’t have the keys with him. He looks around and they are not in the living room. He goes to his room, which is organized, and starts looking for the keys making a mess in the room (He looks in his bag taking everything out, unmakes his bed, throws his books from the book shelf, empties his cabinet and drawer, and he moves his bed from its place and leaves it in a vertical position.

He sees the window and climbs down it. While he is going down someone screams “TIEF!”; he gets distracted and falls.

When he lands he sees his housemate “Lizard” smoking cigarettes in front of the door. They look at each other. Lizard put out cigarette. Sloth is standing up when someone tackles him down screaming “TIEF”.  Lizard stands up, open the door and close it behind him.

Character Profile: Boy (Week 05)

This Character profile is base on “Ideas for The animated Short” written by Karen Sullivan, Kate Alexander and Gary Schumer.

Boy and his Shadow

1. Boy is eight and he is scared of his shadow. His ethical baseline is categorical imperative. He has a strong sense of justice and he believes that something that follows you all the time has to be bad. However he is scared extremely scared.

2. Boy is dominated by logic.

3/4. His greatest strength is perseverance and his weakness (flaw) is fear.

5. He sees himself like a prisoner that needs to free himself.

6. He is seen like a weirdo, he doesn’t have many friends. He is a lonely boy.

7. His biggest secret is his fear to his shadow.

8. He wants to save the world from the shadows.

9. He will do anything to free himself from the shadow, including sacrificing himself.

10. Boy needs to learn how to be brave and believe in himself.

This is the first Boy’s character profile sketch.

Reference for “housemates”: China il (Week 05)

I am a fan of animation for adults and “China, Illinois” is my new discovery. It is a good example of the kind of humour I want to use for my housemates’ story; adult humour but at the same time a bit of childish nonsense. The events are ridiculous and totally unrealistic however, they are the kind of things that, as adults, cross our minds but we try to avoid all the time.

Before I introduce China IL I would like to point the fact that this show is also the format I would like to use for the housemates’ story. This show is episodic; which means the whole series share the characters but there is no need to watch the episode in certain order to understand the show. Every single episode works independently. This allows me to have different characters and a complex story in terms of relationships without having trouble with a time limit.

All the episodes are short and are focus in one single issue. The characters will be build throw out the different shorts but it won’t be necessary to know all the characters for all the episodes. Another example is Rugrats; this show is episodic, there is no need to watch all the show to know that Angelica was evil, Chucky is a coward and Tommy is brave.

Now, China, IL – meaning "China, Illinois" – is an animated television series for the cable network Adult Swim. The series is created by Brad Neely, and features Neely's existing characters from the China, IL web-series and special. Characters include Frank and Steve Smith, aka "The Professor Brothers," and Mark "Baby" Cakes.  Neely provides the voice for all three characters. The series is produced by Williams Street and animated by Titmouse, Inc. China, IL has been renewed for a second season with the possibility of a new half hour runtime. (Wikipedia)

Check this two videos; I hope you enjoy this nonsense as much I do....

The Keepers (Week04)

Theme: My idea was born from a sociological concept I heard a few years ago: Society regulates itself not because it wants to, but because it feels watched. This means that a person does not steal not because he thinks it is wrong to steal, but because he knows that if he does the community will judge him. But he could steal and not let anyone knows about it; however, in the society we have built we have created the idea that we are always being watched. That’s why there are cameras everywhere that are reminding us that someone is watching us (even when those cameras are not working).

The story: it is based on a circular city, where all the windows are looking towards the inside of the city. There are no windows looking to the outside. There is a tower in the middle of the city which is higher than every other building. This tower does not have stairs or doors; it is just a big cylindrical column. At the top of the tower there are two beings, one is blue and the other one is red. Everything else is black and white.

These characters are the keepers of the city and they play with the lives of the citizens that never look up. However, one day, Blue and Red are playing dumb at the top of the tower and a cup of tea feels and almost hits a citizen. Then, this new character starts noticing the two weird beings, so they decide to play “who kills the guy first”. Every time they try to kill him, he finds a way to trick them and save his life. The keepers will play with dice to see who the next to try to take his life is.  

That’s how the story is going right now. I will make another post to talk more about the characters soon.

Amelie Poulain: a movie about a Character (Week04)

A few days ago I had a conversation with a friend about characters and their role in making a good film. It doesn’t matter how good your story line is, if your characters aren’t credible the whole story will fall apart.

Well, you might be asking yourself why I called the post “Amelie”. The story line of this film is quite simple: it is the story of a girl that falls in love with a guy that she doesn’t know. It is not the most original story, however, it’s the character that makes the film so interesting. Amelie Poulain is not a simple girl, she is special and she has a lot of features that take her and take the story to a different level. If Amelie had been a boring character, there would be no story.

What would be of Amelie’s story with a flat character? Let’s say that Marian, a girl that works in a cafe, finds a time-capsule in her apartment. She is not a very curious girl, so she decided to put it in the bin. Then Marian is walking on a train station and sees a guy that left a book behind. She turns around and leaves. Obviously the Amelie movie cannot happen with a flat character because the whole story is pushed on by the decisions the character makes. If Amelie wasn´t curious she wouldn’t find the person that owned the time-capsule or she wouldn’t meet her lover in the train station (that is not how it happens but I don’t want to spoil the movie).

Conclusion, good characters make good stories. I loved Amelie Poulain, but I would have hated a movie about a Marian Poulain.

A Reference: "Fritz The Cat" (Week 03)

Having references is something really important. I found this animation call Fritz the cat, it is the kind of genre I am interested to develop for the housemate story. It is a feature film about a Cat that lives his live like a hippy: music, drugs, alcohol and girls; a lot of girls. It is a very straight forward humor, criticizes society without being gentle. I think is a more grotesque version of Ren & Stimpy humor (Yeah, I didn't know that was possible until I watched this film). I think it is amazing. I would love to hear what you think.

Theme and Genre (Week 03)

It is important to identify some different aspects in the story in order to develop it. Features like the genre and the themes can define the way the story is going to develop. But what is the different between this two? It can be quite confusing trying to identify these two concepts because they share vocabulary to describe them, for example; theme can be related with romance, but romance is a genre. However, an easy way to define them is that theme is what the story is about while genre is the type of story we are making. For example, the theme can be death but the genre can be comedy.

Some amateur writers (like me) might think that spending time working on these categories can be a waste of creativity and time. However, writing a story without have theme and the genre clear will get very messy and you can waste a LOT of time. Let’s use the former example again; if we are making a story about death the approach will be totally different if the genre is comedy or horror; the characters will act in different ways, the events will have different results and the ways that the events relate with the characters will be totally different. It is not that you need to write the theme and the genre down, they can be just at the back of our mind; however, having them written will be better.

Now, let’s explore theme and genre in the ideas I raised in my previous posts:

• The boy and his shadow: I want it to be a kid’s animation with a bit of non sense,  sort of like Ren & Stimpy or Rocko’s Modern life. I would say that the genre would be teen/adult animation comedy. Moving foward with the theme, the story is about a kid that doesn’t like his shadow, but that is not the theme, that is the plot (something I will talk about in other post). For now, I think the theme would be growing up.
• Yah pet is not: I think I have clear that this is a kids comedy animation with a bit of adult jokes. And the theme is protecting your pets.
• The Housemates story: this is a full on adult satire-comedy. And the theme is not a share house (that is just the environment where the story happens) the actual theme is the issue around the beginning of multicultural societies like Australia.
•  The man and the seagulls: I think it is a tragic comedy. I haven’t defined the theme but I think it is hunger.

After this exercise I have realized that all of them are comedies (I don’t even like comedy movies, I am a psychological horror fan). However, all this ideas look in my head more interesting if they are comedies. Writing them will be a really interesting and maybe would be a good idea to explore some important events in the story changing the genre.

The Man and the Seagulls (Week 03)

Andrew is sitting with a box of sushi in a train station.  Seagulls are flying around following him when he sits. He scares the birds, they fly away. When he is gonna start eating he gets knock into by a fat Gothic woman who is eating a big oily burger. He stares at her; he can’t stop seeing how she eats one burger behind the other. The bag she has in his hands has at least 10 burgers. Suddenly, a old Italian cleaner comes to him and speak in Italian something he is not able to understand. The Italian old man gives up and continues walking. He looks again the fat woman and she is staring at him. Then he realized that a seagull is trying to reach the sushi he is holding in his hand. He gets scared and stands up. All his sushis fly away and the seagulls eat them all.

The Boy’s Shadow (Week 02)

My third idea is related to Peter Pan, the boy that never grows. When I read Peter Pan as a kid, I found the idea that Peter pan was trying to sew his shadow to his shoes fantastic. I wondered how he managed to his shadow disconnected from his feet the first time.

I still think that would be interesting not having a shadow. A thing that follows you all the time; It doesn’t matter how many things you do to trick your shadow, it will always follow you.

What if a kid tries to trick his shadow and actually makes it stop following him?

Pets aren’t toys: Your Chicken Can not…. (week 02)

The second idea I have is related with the experiences that kids have with pets. I grew up surrounded by animals and I had a lot of different adventures with them: from being chased by chickens, that wanted to bite my toes, to grabbing a snake thinking that it was a hose.

My story would be based on what we are not supposed to do with pets. I actually remember many different things I did to my pets thinking that they were like toys. It was WRONG, really wrong. That is the message I want to use: to take care of your pets, they are not toys.

In South America, chickens are a very common pet for little kids. They usually suffer a lot. That is the reason I want to use a chicken as my main character in a film of what not to do with your pets.

The Housemates “Nightmare” (week 02)

My first idea is based on anecdotes from the housing experiences I´ve had in Australia. It is not a mystery that as students (international or domestic) we suffer from what I call the “loony husian” symptom. I have lived in so many different places in Melbourne and every house has always one character in common; the loopy housemate.

I had the experience of living in a house with a really strange character. He used to open the door of my room without knocking. More than once he opened the door and just stared at me for a few minutes and then closed the door again. Yeah, he was weird.

On the hand, the wacky housemate is not the only reoccurring character. There is always the smart ass who always want everybody to do what he thinks is best, the lazy one who you will always find in the kitchen making breakfast at 3pm, the ninja housemate who suddenly appears behind you without you noticing them, the understandable one who no one understands because of his thick accent, the party boy, etc.

A story of a bunch of housemates, with different nationalities/backgrounds living together under the same roof, coexisting in a crazy environment of partying, studying, crazy dietary, low budgets and crazy jobs; however they are unable to understand each other.

I will continue working on this story later on.

A Writer... (week 02)

"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

 Thomas Mann

Welcome to One/my Writing Spot (week 02)

I don’t even know how to start. I am not a writer and English is not even my first language, but I think this is going to be an interesting place to put my ideas together and actually make them a reality.

I believe that writers usually create stories which reflect their experience in life. I do not want to simplify the exercise of writing; it is actually quite difficult, however a good writer is able to take the simplest anecdotes, add a bit of fantasy (or reality), and use a bunch of fancy and extravagant names to create the most interesting story you have ever read.

For now I would like just to invite you to read my brain storm of ideas for short films, feature films and graphic novels.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Juan