The Animated Taster

During class on Monday my partner and I have just about finished our drawings for the animated taster. We were doing some finishing up sketches that needed both of our attention. According to the feedback we received the past and current week, we needed to change the order or a couple of events and show the audience how Mr. Scuttles gains then looses the upper hand in the battle that leads to his defeat. But in order to show that we had to create a new scene or basically a more in depth action scene.

What we have planned is that Mr. Scuttles gains the upper hand by knocking Super Thimbles’ noodle aside and points the tip of his umbrella at the kill point or his neck. As Scuttles is starring at Thimbles in confidence, Thimbles takes advantage of his noodle weapon feature…the bend and snap. Thimbles bends back the noodle to snap it forward and hit the Evil Mr. Scuttles on the head. When the noodle meets Scuttles’ head, it knocks his top hat down over his eyes.

Scuttles begins to flail his arms up and down and Thimbles prods him with the noodle to back him up onto the end of the diving board. At this time Scuttles recovers and pulls his hat up off his eyes and realizes where he’s at and looks worried. During this brief moment a breeze picks up and Scuttles does an evil crackle. He opens his umbrella and the wind picks him up and sends him over the fence where the dog awaits. There will be audio for the dog to bark and then a smoke cloud to appear as the dog is attacking the runaway.

Thimbles and the hostages celebrate and then the boy comes in with the cannon ball, and sends the toys to the bottom of the pool. Thimbles sees that all the toys had sank and smacks his head resulting in the ending.

Story Edit and Animated Taster Progress

My partner and I have received feedback on our story. It is still lacking a bit because the climax isn’t completely there and the ending doesn’t occur where it should. It was suggested in class that the story be rearranged in a way that when Scuttles makes his escape, the toy hostages cheer to his retreat and then the boy comes and causes the tidal wave that sink the toys resulting in Super Thimbles smacking his head.

The story that my partner and I had originally developed was that Mr. Scuttles successfully escapes and then the boy comes and causes the tidal wave that sinks the toys. Once Super Thimbles would smack his head it would then go immediately to the alley where scuttles lands. Scuttles is supposed to look cheerful to his escape until the dog approaches then picks him up to carry him away. I do agree the story is lacking somewhere and my partner and I feel confident in the suggestions, so we have decided to follow through with the alternative ending.

Our next goal is to refine our story and storyboard. We both have planned to add more frames for the in-betweens and we’re setting it up for the animated taster. For this week I have focused on adding in-betweens in my portion of the storyboard that included my character. After some more refining we will add audio to our storyboard and play it through as if we were watching the animation itself.

Mid-Quarter Report

For this week, my partner and I have prepared a mid-quarter report. It is basically an extension of the inspiration report, but with progress and future plans. Developing the story has not been the easiest to do. My partner and I have many different view points on almost every frame but in the end we came out with a stronger story. After bouncing many ideas off of one another, we have finally designed the storyboard.
Along with the story, we have designed 3 hostages characters: a toy yoda, a robot, and a pig. We wanted to give the toys some contrast from one another sense the primary characters are toy animals. We have already made a minor edit to Evil Mr. Scuttles escape. Instead of having the propeller blades come out of his hat, we decided he use his umbrella and be picked up by the wind. We have had some other minor changes, but my partner and I have a firm grasp of what we want and when we are doing it.
The timeline that we have prepared for the remainder of the quarter has been layed out. As of week 6, we are going to rig our characters and our background and compositing done by week 7. For week 8, we are preparing the animated tester along with testing the audience. The revisions and production process will proceed form week 8 to presentation on week 11.

Preparing a Shot List to Execute a Story Board

My partner and I have finally planned out a shot list. We knew what we wanted in general, but the specifics were a little difficult to pin down. Without getting too detailed with the camera angles and movements, here is the shot list. The story begins with Super Thimbles looking through a pair of binoculars and watching over the backyard and the side alley where a dog is playing.

After scanning back and fourth Super Thimbles eyes stop on Evil Mr. Scuttles pushing an innertube with toy hostages out to the middle of the pool. Super Thimbles lowers his binoculars and drops his mouth with a gasp. He then springs into action and the batman theme song begins to play. We then see Thimbles grab the handle of the zip line and speeds down.

Waiting is Evil Mr. Scuttles as Thimbles lands in front of him. Super Thimbles throws a couple of chineese stars and Mr. Scuttles deflects them by opening his umbrella. Mr. Scuttles then points his umbrella at Super Thimbles for a dual. Thimbles looks around for a weapon and spots a funnoodle then a battle endures. After the first few strikes back and fourth you will see action word bubbles indicating impact, then the hostages will be viewed as there eyes shift watching the battle.

The battle comes to a close as Super Thimbles corners the Evil Mr. Scuttles at the end of the diving board. Mr. Scuttles does his evil laugh and raises his umbrella to be picked up by the wind. Super Thimbles grins as Mr. Scuttles makes his escape over the fence into the alley.

From a distance you here a boy scream “cannon ball”. When the boy jumps in the water it causes a tidal wave onto the innertube of toys and sends them to the bottom of the pool. Super Thimbles then and smacks his head.

The scene then heads to Evil Mr. Scuttles as he lands. A dog approaches him and picks him up and carries him away while chomping on him.

Inspiration Report

During class on July 26^th , my partner and I developed an Inspiration Report about the characters and storyline. Our inspiration for the story started with our characters Evil Mr. Scuttles and Super Thimbles. We decided to do a Hero vs. Villain drama/comedy. Since my partner’s character already had a super hero identity, I agreed to give my pre-existing penguin an evil twist. Thus we had a plan like that of Batman vs. Penguin.

This was the inspiration behind our character designs.

Super Thimbles: Super Hero Batman, Stuffed Toy Panda, Similar style to Sanrio Characters (bold outline), Cute, Simple, and kid friendly.

Evil Mr. Scuttles: Evil Penguin from Batman, Chilly Willy Cartoon Penguin, Hint of Mafia, Daffy Duck, Toy Story Squeaky Toy.

Another idea came to mind as we were designing our characters. Aside from just using a Batman approach, we could make them be toys like in Toy Story, and that’s how we developed the story. Our next steps are probably going to be toward story boarding and sketching out many of our ideas for the animation. We are going to be using a frame by frame approach for our more complicated sections. To help with the complex animation, we our considering using word bubbles like pow and bam so that we can eliminate even more complex animation.