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.

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

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 :)

Color script Disco

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.