Thursday, December 18, 2008

A fresh start

Hi everyone, after meeting yesterday with Maarten,
it was decided to make a fresh start, that also means a new blog:

http://lunarcactus.blogspot.com/

That's where the action is now, please check it out!
thankx Cesare

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Chapter 1: The Birth of Memohri

In the middle of the sea on a distant alien planet there are scientists working on an algae growth serum. Tubes and funnels bubble with glowing toxic liquids as two fumbling scientists, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, search for the magic formula. Suddenly, unbeknownst to the scientists, a bottle in the background bubbles and bubbles until it overboils, leaking toxic liquids down a drain into the sea just as a little fish passes by.

Bloop, bloop,
In an instant he is transformed into Memohri (shwang), a great and evil fish nemesis, that spits fire and electricity from his long flapping barbels.


He moves under the water scaring the fish away and tearing up the seabed until he reaches the shore where he can see Metropolis Buzz Buzz just on the horizon. (here we sense doom)

Meanwhile, in Metropolis Buzz Buzz where people are oblivious to the impending doom, another fish like creature is taking orders at the Catfish Padyyshack.


“Hello my name is Dimp, welcome to Catfish Paddyshack. How can I help you?”

Dimp is the employee of the month. He’s at the top of his game, the height of his prime and has totally mastered subtle arts of the fast food service industry.

But on that fateful day, everything was about to change…

A fat frogmama with her four tadpoley kids walks in and orders several Catfish burgers
(“Hold the algae, add extra tartar sauce and I want five side orders of curley tenticles fried extra crispy!” ).

To be continued....

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ok, I have been talking with Renee', my sweet sweet half, about the story dev. and she's helping in shaping up the story and spicing it up. Writing is certainly much more her thing than mine so I am happy to work with someone who has humour and writing skills. As you can see the structure is loose enough to give plenty of space to play around with visuals.
The descent of Dimp into loserdome (yes, he's wearing a funny fish costume!) is actually the most difficult thing to do I think, coming up with funny situations that are funny but also visually driven. This will also decide how the confrontation with Memhori is going to happen. It would be great to have your suggestions for funny gags in text or visual form, at this moment is very much open and fluid :-)...don't be shy....

Friday, September 12, 2008

Beer Robot

The new recruit for the disco scene in the 'Loser' animation!


Monday, September 1, 2008

Meeting with Ramon and Michiel

I don't know if you feel the same, but the blog has gone very quiet, and I am afraid that without a clear direction and objectives it becomes impossible to go forward.

That is why last friday I met with Ramon Verberne and Michiel Snjiders . I wanted to ask their advice for applying to the Film fonds for story development subsidy.

Before the meeting, I reworked the storyboard of 'Loser saves the day', switched scenes around, reworked a couple of panels and generally made it more compact, and I used the storyboard of the alien abduction gag as the intro. I printed some of the artwork and research picture material and wrote a motivation, as well as a 'logline', what would appear on the tv guide if this animation would be featured.

The meeting went very well, short and intense, and both liked the story and settings. I suggested a running time of 5 minutes, which Michiel said is right, if we go above that it becomes trickier to ask for funds, and can be showcased in different ways, for example as intro to a main feature at the cinema. The funny nature of the story is also easily geared towards a young audience of teenagers, 12 years up.

Because we are a group of people instead of an individual, it works to our advantage and Ramon can play the Kika & Bob card to show them that we have worked together as a team before.

Their remarks on the story were very useful, and suggested to apply for funding by the deadline sometime in november. That can give us enough time to tweak the story until we're all satisfied and develop some of the main characters.

Here are some of the remarks, I hope I have written them down correctly afterwards on the journey back in the train:

1-The story misses anticipation, that is, the build up to the meeting between the monster and the loser.

2-Need to bring more contrast and make more extreme the nasty traits of the monster versus the miserable state of the loser. Also make the choice clear for who we root for.

3-Define funny situations that accentaute the 'loser' state of our main ch: funny appearance, dumped by his girlfriend, lost his job, lost his house, alos Michiel's suggestion that other aliens pick on him, talk behind his back, maybe someone pisses in his drink instead of cigarette ashes....

4-Think about developing a few chs that may come back in later episodes.

5-The monster could be created out of some chemical reaction, or some funny weird alien phenomenon. Maybe he needs a nemesis, perfect example is Superman, his nemesis is kryptonite :-)

Ramon can help us with feedback on the story, and Michiel can also advise what the best options are. As I understand from their response, the basic of the story works, the look and feel, flash as being the format, the characters etc, but we need to add some punches and smart/funny situations.

If we can develop the story by november, add a moving storyboard and some modelsheet, it is possible to apply for Realisation Funds, instead of Development funds. That means the budget to finalise and execute the animation. The money is not great but we can get funds to work comfortably for a few months ;-)

Soooo... their last suggestion was to spend sometime on the story and write our ideas on the blog (like Maarten suggested). I know we are all busy with work, or as in my case a shortage of, and that this is a long term project, but it is also a great opportunity to invest in our future, and judging by Ramon and Michiel's busy schedule, there is no lack of funded animation projects.

I will upload some story ideas as soon as possible. Sorry for the looooong post, but ther's a lot of catching up to do...;-)

I really hope you all want to take part in this project. I know there was a lot of constructive criticism and that some people found the story not funny or too complex to execute. However, this is an opportunity, and it would be great to see all your suggestions soon. If something is unclear, please do not hesitate to contact me.

This is my Motivation I have written for the Funds:
While working on the Kika & Bob animation project I worked with a group of talented illustrators and character designers, all passionate about one thing: animation.
After the project was finished I realized that without a structure that provides and nurture for the talents of the people involved, the knowledge and energy that has been accumulated would be lost.

This is why I would like to encourage a culture of animation, where from the first concept to the final execution there can be an exchange between people with different skills.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Saturnday nights

I have been thinking a lot about what it has been addressed in previous posts with regards to the construction of our little gag.

Jurjen's comment about the giant spaceship hairdryer, under 'gag basics', is also where I thought the gag should go, and its many possibilities for different sort of objects and functions I think can deliver some pretty funny situations. Maybe I am just thinking too much about this, but I miss the reason why aliens are abducting other aliens. I will upload a couple of rough ideas later which try to deal with that and present some alternatives.

The storyboard above is approaching the gag from the relationship between the aliens and their behavior. Rather than trying to 'serialise' the gag, like the initial storyboard drawn by Jelle indicates, I have just created a self contained little story. Not sure if this is the best direction, and at this point I would like to start actually 'making' something based on all the material already posted. Would like to hear your thoughts on this.....

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Gag basics

I enjoyed seeing the different approaches to the "Hairy Alien' gag, Mitch's drawings are very funny and cartooney and Lennard's storyboard has a surrealist tone ready to be taken further into science fiction.
Even with such a limited storyline, the possibilities are endless, and that is what is so fascinating, but in order to to stick to our self imposed deadline of 2 weeks with a finished animation I suggest we go back to Jelle's original storyboard and look at the basic workings of the gag, and build it up from the ground up:

1-HAIRY ALIEN (must be hairy, at least for the first series of gags)











2-BY AN ALIEN SPACESHIP IS SUCKED UP, 0 GRAVITY LEVITATED, BEAMED UP, CAUGHT WITH A LASSO, PULLED UP, GRABBED, SNATCHED, KIDNAPPED, WHATEVER YOU CAN THINK OF!

3- THE HAIRY ALIEN IS RETURNED TO THE GROUND TRANSFORMED INTO:



a skinny alien




a very skinny alien (guitar optional)


a decorative hairy organic plant


a hairy french intellectual (sorry Georges)


an alien puddle


an alien classic


a super hot sexy alien

or a very scary super smooth inflated sex alien doll


or an inflated fat shiny alien something...


And the list can continue to what we find funniest to characterise....So maybe is an idea that we can all make 1 hairy alien ch, and its counterpart, that is what it turns into, then I/we can animate the funky stuff in between, the way is abducted by the spaceship, and its transformation. Let me know what you think.

mitch sketches


here are the sketches from mitch :)

space

here is my firts small storyboard idea. it's not realy supposed to be funny but more scary wierd. i made some noise xmpls in it.

Monday, June 16, 2008

It's a mean world out there: above is a sketch for a storyboard, hairy alien, sucking sounds, being spat out again completely naked.
Hairy aliens, some variations, colors are just for reference.
and just for fun, a small alien walk cycle, based on Jelle's original storyboard....

some inspiration

hallo guys,

i like all your ideas, but i'm a little short on time right now to help you guys out on this first chapter of this grand adventure. I have a link to a nice animation project, it was shown at the last film festival here in rotterdam. There were some great artists participating who usually draw graphic novels and comic books witch include Charles Burns and Lorenzo Mattotti. there are six stories but the one that is most cleaverly made is the one from Richard mcGuire. check the link to the myspace, especially check 'extrait 10' it's so good. shame its not the compleet story. ill try and see if i can get the compleet dvd from the filmfestival somehow.

grt menno

http://www.primalinea.com/pdn/index.html

Thursday, June 12, 2008

The bully aliens

Yesterday lennard, niels, cesare and I met at cesare's house to discuss how to proceed and how to deal with the pointers and advice everyone has so kindly offered us so far (please keep doing it it is very much appreciated!)

The general consensus was that we started of too big to achieve what we are trying to, which is start working together and put the talents, good ideas, passion for animation, and the fun we had in working on K&B to good use. So we decided to downscale what we are doing and move on to a bit more managable animations. We aren't discarding "loser saves the day" we are putting it aside for now.

To honor all of cesare's work on the animatic and all of the lovely scetches he did for "the loser" we desided that we just stick with the world we allready have and see what are fun things that could happen there. The problem with "loser saves the day" was that a lot of us felt there wasn't much going on that was funny. So we thought what can happen in this alien city that is funny and we just started throwing some ideas around.

There were several ideas we had for shorts (max of, maybe, 10 to 20 secs. 20 beeing long allready). We will post more ideas in the future but the one that seemed easiest to start on was an idea niels had.



Bully aliens


Simple storyboard above.
What we really like about this idea is the enormous fariety you can do this with.
- You can have different aliens that get abducted.
- you can have different UFO abducting
- You can have different reasons of adbuction
- There can be different settings/ surroundings
- There can be different ways the UFO approaches the alien
Etc etc etc.

We set the deadline in 2 weeks, to have the first of these finnished (it seemed to us that this was really funny to do in a serie). We agreed to have the first charactersketches, colorscripts, UFOsketches, style research, different ways to do this gag, etc online (here or via e-mail) by monday.

So our question to you guys is: If you feel the urge to pick up on any part of this SB, the UFO, the alien, the BG, just start making some sketches and put them up here. On monday we then pick some ideas and start working on them. (remeber we feel like this is funnier to do in a series so all ideas will be considered in the end and are more than welcome! Even if it is just a line of text on what might happen with the alien and the UFO)

Lennard has offered to be the middleman, so he'll be in touch with you guys to see if you're available for working in this.
Hope to see some nice aliens, UFO's, BG's, ideas here on monday! Thanks in advance guys :)

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Some moodsketches


Simple storyboard

Here's the storyboard, cesare and I figured it was better to submit this before the animatic has to be altered again... This is a better way to move scenes around and make some small changes to the storyline.

Cesare added some scenes and moved some scenes around after the comment that Lennie posted at the previous animatic
We'd love to hear your opinions again on how you guys think this storyline will work (please don't comment on the quality of the drawings because that will cause cesare to do it all over again in illustrator :P)

If we all agree on this as being the storyline we will go ahead and find some catchy tunes and sounds so we can improve the timing a bit and make a final (and really simple) animatic...

I will also upload some color impressions i did last week, and i think cesare will upload his color/design ideas about the disco today. Maybe then Niels and Simon could start on some character designs for the disco (will be easier when there's a colorscript for that we thought).















Donkey Kong.




I really like the design and feel to it. Simple yet funny.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Preview of MEMOHRI the Monster. Spaceage-fishy-zilla:)

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Improved Animatic 'Loser saves the day'

Ok, after the very productive meeting with Jelle and Simon on 22 May where we went through the previous animatic and improved lots of scenes here is the new animatic. I think it has become tighter qua timing and fun factor...

In terms of the storyline Jelle suggested to make the monster bored after destroying yet another alien metropolis and is excited to hear the music coming from the disco, a kind of curiosity kills the cat/monster so to speak....and we added a swinging intro animation of the cocktail being prepared with the ice cubes forming the title. This is all in a sketch form as you can see but the animatic gives a good feeling of the flow and scene set up.

To do:
-Simon is going to work on the Space Monster ch design and the disco people
-Cesare is working on the loser ch design and animation
-Jelle is working on the bgs and disco interior (maybe Menno can come in as production gets on the way?)

I think is probably handy if I make a digital storyboard from the animatic so that we can plan and divide the rest of the work. Will post it asap. Please let me all know what you think as comments are always welcome....

Monday, May 26, 2008

character layouts

Here are some ideas for characters. Maybe one of you has a favorite, so i can work out more poses..or try to animate a walk-cycle?

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Flash Backgrounds


Very instructive and super designs flickr site by Bradley Gake, all lovingly 'cleaned up' for Flash use, enjoy! (courtesy of Fons)

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Framing

framefilter blog
picturas blog
filmbytes blog

nice blog, they have some animation stills to study.

Mr Jung Stuffed


More inspirational work. Simplistic but nice.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Hello Fons

Here below is a conversation I had via Skype yesterday with Fons Schiedon, hope you all will find it as insightful as I did. If this is not a wake-up call to push us to be serious about working together I don't know then what will....


Hello Fons, how are you? Many compliments for your beautiful music video, really fantastic work! :)

Fons Schiedon says: hey cesare. thanks ver much :)

cesare davolio says: thank you for the inspiration

FS: glad if it did.

You working on something nice?

CD: well, i got together with Simon, Jelle, Menno and Niels to talk about pulling together our resources towards making an amination portfolio, so i am working with Jelle some ideas...and trying to improve my animation skills...

FS: cool. whats the plan?

CD: we've set up a blog, and are posting things that maybe interesting to develop,

CD: that's how i saw your recent masterpiece... :)

FS: the blog is a very nice idea

although I would make it a policy to do all posts in english, because that way if it develops, it becomes accessible to international enthusiasts.

if you can get some animation people to comment on it, I believe that could really be stimulating and pushing the development of your project :)

because - and just shut me up if this bothers you - you are all very nice guys...but if you want to make this good and interesting, you have to stop being nice ;)

CD: how do you mean?

FS: well, and I mean this in general - I don’t know how this is with you guys. BUt, there's a risk in collaborations, especially with people who are more or less working in the same business (illustration), that there's too much consensus...or willingness to be positive and generate mostly happy feedback. But this is bad for animation. haha :)

CD: i was thinking to meet with the ka-ching cartoons guys, know them? i'd like to hear thier experience in animation...

FS: Ive met the ka-ching guys..They're very nice, go meet them

CD: ok! maybe they can share some tips...

FS: very young, but with a strong focus on creating quality material…and much experience already

CD: yes, i followed their work with skunk-fu, liked the animation a lot...

FS: they're good, definitely.

CD: about 'nice', is true, we have to watch out for wrong turns and being honest in our opinions, but at the moment is still about finding out if we can work as a team...for me this initiative has already proved fruitful because i like to have a structure and an 'audience', keeps me focused, so is a good start, i think me and Jelle are going to be the motor, and so far he's coming up strong...

FS: you know what the thing is about being nice? It's about being positive, even when you don't like what's going on.

If an animatic - for instance - is not as good as it could be, you have to go back and change it until it works. Same for backgrounds, characters. I love the animators I work with, but if they deliver a scene that doesnt work, they'll redo it. And if yhey get an animatic from me that they think doesnt work, they'll tell me and I'll go and change it.

The best way to find out if you work as a team is to focus on the work and be honest if you dig it or not, otherwise you're wasting your time

CD: yes, is a good point you make...also about being positive, is to see criticism as a way to become better at what you do...

FS: yes, I believe so.

you are all very talented, so that's great. But it's not like it adds up by default, you know what I mean? To unleash that potential, you have to challenge what you're doing.

And…I believe there's a role for you, being most experienced and - I mean this in the best way possible - "the man in the other room". :D

CD: that's a great line, 'the man in the other room'....for sure none of the guys lack talent, so for that we're covered, and i feel i have a lot to learn if i want to grow professionally but i believe i have the human experience to be the 'glue' for the projects, and to keep continuity in what we should do and keep the communication flowing...

FS: absolutely, that's it

CD: i have to head out to pick up Eliot from school, this has been a great little conversation, do you mind if i post it on the blog?

FS: thought so too.

yeah, no problem, just beep out any swear words ;)

CD: Ciao!

FS: see ya later

CD: what can i say? you're one of a kind, thanks also for the tip about the robot anima walk cycle!

Loser Saves the day (Establishing Shot)



Here is the establishing shot for 'Loser saves the day' animation, see previous animatic. I tried to make the urban setting as less human as possible as it is a sort of 'martian' agglomerate.I have taken on some of Jelle's comments but feedback is always welcome.
The main shape is the round 'disco' with a lit roof with the light bleeping off with the music. It kind of looks like a giant brain, i like that... The atmosphere is late night, if there is even ever daylight in such place :-). Next I will make an interior shot of the 'disco place and then I have some ideas for the main chs. I hope you all like it and inspires you all to join forces in completing this project.

Thursday, May 15, 2008


Jelle's very good robot design was the starting point for an animation test, which we worked on together. I have uploaded the flash file, please see the cycle here

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Monday, May 12, 2008

'De Kapiteinshoed': what if?...



After admiring the gorgeous pics below, I started to think about sea explorations, how men have dared the deepest depths of the sea to conquer this liquid universe, and how civilizations have used the sea to flourish and expand their domains.

Since dawn of man, endless vessels have sank at the bottom of the sea in an attempt to traverse it.

Imagine if 'De kapitienshoed' had the property to make you travel through time. The little boy has this amazing hat, and travels the seas with its supercool sub.

All the 'baddies' that live in the city of the future-Rotterdam want it, because they want to go back in time and steal all those treasures that are at the bottom of the sea. Sometime the 'baddies' even join forces together to defeat the boy-kapitein and steal his hat. The drawing I made is just to represent hats from different times that the little boy finds himself wearing in its exciting time travel adventures.