Wilkommen again comrades.
I hope you've all checked out my friends blog (plug again: http://chulk607.blogspot.com/) and have been impressed by his work so far on an animation recycling project. The style itself was immediately what I thought would work for the animation I was going to write, and having seen some previous work of his, I was convinced this would be a style that could pay off.
Predictably for such a lazy man as myself, I didn't start commencing my first script until April, but, having looked at some random scripts online, I was convinced I could cobble together something that looked like one for all intents and purposes. I also thought it would be sufficient to give enough scope for plenty of sections to be dependent on the quality of the animation. I began a headlong journey into writing a full-on pilot episode and sent snippets to my friend.
It was with some trepidation that I sent the first few scenes over and got a good reaction so I ploughed on. Sadly I hadn't really accounted for the length of what I was writing and had to have a quick reality check. Currently standing at a ridiculous 8,547 words, it's well over half the size of the dissertation I wrote (which was terrible...) and had taken very little time to breeze through, less than a month. Given that my story was already around half an hour in length and was only half finished, it dawned on me that expecting to make something that was nearly an hour in length was a very foolish idea. After some gentle suggestion I agreed that trying to trim this beast into small 5 minute episodes was wiser.
After whizzing through these I sent them onto some more friends for some feedback. Again it was positive and encouraged me to write on, not without some setbacks along the way, but I'll get to those later. One of these friends was another animator who took a very keen interest in the scripts and did say something along the lines of: "I wasn't expecting a lot but I'm impressed..." Humble praise, if I am under-selling myself.
At this point I would show you some of Dan's work but he is blog/website-less at this point, but I'm sure he will be around soon to show you. I may post some of his work if he doesn't mind instead...
So what I thought I'd show first is a character description, in this instance, our lead character, Esteban Sanchez.
Name: Esteban Sanchez
Also known as: Any name he decides he’s called that day.
Age: Around 25
Main Relationships: Bones (best friend), Miguel (owner/friend), Boris (friend/lodger), Grace (girlfriend)
Appearance:
Esteban is a relatively short man, around 5’ 8”, who is in reasonable shape and presents himself well. He is a ladies’ man (despite having a girlfriend) and is handsome in this respect. He has long dark hair, with sideburns and goatee and moustache combo. His skin is brown, not from being Latin, but from tanning himself and he has bright blue eyes.
Clothes:
Esteban wears a variety of stylish outfits that always look very Mexican or Old West in feel. Lots of woollen items, and a beanie hat, or something similar. He generally wears jeans or smart trousers and has stylish, winkle-picker shoes.
Personality:
Buried under it all, Esteban is a nice guy deep down. However, it is extremely difficult to get past the bravado and showmanship that he gives off. He likes to think himself the “alpha male” or “the big man/don”, and will generally screw over people, even close friends, should the need arise. He is a mercenary, always looking for ways to make money. He is a dealer but deals terrible measures, and cuts his drugs so they are not as potent.
Although lacking in intelligence, Esteban always considers himself to be right and will often be heard saying “Esteban wins: fact!” when involved in a discussion. Despite having an incredible lack of intelligence or common sense, Esteban inevitably ends up on top, even when things look like they have gone wrong for him.
Esteban owns his house out right, and it is filled with expensive gadgets, a testament to the profitability of his dealing. His house is Mexican-themed and is furnished to such end. Living with him are his cat, Miguel and his friend, Boris the Owl (although Boris lives in a treehouse in the garden). Also living with Esteban is his girlfriend Grace, who in the Webisodes is never seen, only spoken about in ominous tones.
Esteban truly believes he is Mexican and tries to pretend this but he knows nothing of their culture. His back story will be revealed as we go on but suffice to say he is definitely not from Mexico.
Mannerisms:
Esteban is very elegant, except for when he is stoned, and he can look very much worse for wear. He has built up a high tolerance however, so this is uncommon. His voice is a Mexican accent, which is fake, but extremely convincing.
So there you have him, our lead guy. I'll show you some drawings soon, but I'll make you wait a bit first. In the mean time I think the inspiration came from this fellow. Laters.
Showing posts with label sanchez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sanchez. Show all posts
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
Tuesday, 19 August 2008
And so it all started...
Greetings people. This is going to be a blog about an animation project being produced out of good old Wolverhampton in the UK. Looking around me every day I saw a sea of wonderful people; friends, family, work colleagues, but saw all these people surrounded by a dark, grey city that had no ambition and seemingly no hope. I had an idea for an escape, a thought of my own set of characters and stories.
It probably started when I first created an 'animation' in PowerPoint at work using pictures robbed from Google image search and our 'people directory' of faces and made several little 5-10 minute stories. They had no sound, instead the speech was provided in text bubbles and as the images were composited using MS Paint it had little finesse. They were a pastiche of the A-Team and entertained people so I continued to make these little stories until predictably, management stepped in and I was not allowed to make or send them any more.
I then created the idea in my head for a series of characters and a premise for a cartoon. I jotted some of these ideas down but then never went anywhere with them and then something happened. Maybe it was the relentlessly depressing tone of a home town that I perversely still love or maybe it was that I'm now part of the management team that had stopped my fun in the past but I decided I needed to start writing again.
After a break of several years and after one very caffeine-fuelled day at work I sent the following insane message to my friend on 18th March 2008. It was entitled: "the ramblings of a mad man.txt". Here it is in all its insane madness (spelling mistakes included…):
"My idea is very simple - I want to write my own long-running animation show. Initially it would probably be say, a 20 minute pilot but this would purely be enough to set up the characters and scenarios for a full series.
I want me and whoever I get involved to be rich and famous and to be able to look back on their lives and say "I made that". That was my contribution to the world and everyone else will damn well know about it. Like we said, I'm tired of procrastination. I'm tired of daydreaming. I'm tired of answering the fucking phone to a bunch of ungrateful cunts who get paid more than I ever fucking will if i carry on the way I'm going. I want to bring the schoolfriends back together and create something unique. I want to be able to meet Chris Morris some day and say "I made something that can stand up with the kind of stuff you did". I appreciate this may be difficult but I'm not in the mood to think through the technicalities of it all right about now.
My idea is something I've had for a very long time and I want it to create our own little world of characters and places that will be as recognisable as Springfield, Peckham, Fawlty Towers or Quahog. I want to create a british animation that will stand up to anything America has produced and be as globally accepted as them. I want it to have it's own look and feel, something you can buy into, no matter how ridiculous and absurd it is because people care about the pixels moving about on their TV screen as much as they care about their own friends and colleagues.
As for the actual animation itself, I want to move away from the family-based/school based animations that seem to have become de-rigeur these days. Sicne Family Guy i can't think of anything truly distinctive, nothing that has captured my attention. I've tried to get into Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken and various other non-animation based comedies (the IT crowd, etc) but nothing has jumped out at me. I see no other choice than to take matters into our own hands.
I want to base a comedy around a group of friends (and enemies) who are in their twenties, much like us. There's no point writing about something if you haven't experienced it. Yes, I intend to have wacky moments and flashbacks, that's part of the visually explosive nature of animation, the fact that you CAN do things that you couldn't do in real-life but I still want it to be based around reality.
I want it to draw on a wide range of influences, from stuff like Family Guy and South Park to non-animated comedies like Only Fools, Brass Eye and Monty Python. I want the look of the series to draw heavily on the main character, in that it will have a distinctly Mexican/generic Latin look to it, even though the surroundings are familiar. I want it to be easy on the eye so it draws people in with beatiful lighting and character animation but lock people in once they're in by firstly having a lot of jokes in it, and secondly by having storylines and character development that make sense. I want it ultimately to have a natural end. I don't want to see my characters wearing the same blue shorts and orange T-shirt and staying the same age for 20 years. I want to have character ageing and storyline progression that you would see in something like Only Fools and Horses. Births, deaths, weddings, relationships, hatred and all the other wonderful little things that crop up in life. That's the kind of thing that will help us to stand out. It's almost as if it's a sort of statement: Yes, we're pretending it's real but you know ultimately that it's not but you don't care, you buy into it because you can appreciate being in those situations.
I want the humour to be brutal at times, I want it to deliberately shock people to get their attention, but I also want it to have it's silly moments as there's many different moods you can be in and comedy doesn't have a defining style, it needs to adapt to survive. I want it to have sad, poignant moments in it but are always rooted back in comedy. I like to think that no matter what happens I can always raise a smile or a laugh to something and I'd like the animation to reflect that.
I hope this makes sense, I know it's very vague but I think of it more as some kind of manifesto. I will come to you with more actual character descriptions, locations (probably more your side of things) and actual plot lines. I have an idea for main A and B storylines and some jokes that would fit but I need to get these all down together, so I'll keep you posted.
Cheers for listening to my insane stream of consciousness, it's very much appreciated.
P.S. - I'm provisionally going to title it: "The Cautionary Tales of Esteban Sanchez and Others". Rolls off the fucking tongue, don't it?""
So that was that. Luckily my friend was thinking the same things, albeit slightly less psychotically REDRUM as my stream of consciousness, but he too wanted to do something. A plan was formed, which I'll talk about tomorrow.
For now, take a look at some of my friend's animation ideas here: http://chulk607.blogspot.com/
It probably started when I first created an 'animation' in PowerPoint at work using pictures robbed from Google image search and our 'people directory' of faces and made several little 5-10 minute stories. They had no sound, instead the speech was provided in text bubbles and as the images were composited using MS Paint it had little finesse. They were a pastiche of the A-Team and entertained people so I continued to make these little stories until predictably, management stepped in and I was not allowed to make or send them any more.
I then created the idea in my head for a series of characters and a premise for a cartoon. I jotted some of these ideas down but then never went anywhere with them and then something happened. Maybe it was the relentlessly depressing tone of a home town that I perversely still love or maybe it was that I'm now part of the management team that had stopped my fun in the past but I decided I needed to start writing again.
After a break of several years and after one very caffeine-fuelled day at work I sent the following insane message to my friend on 18th March 2008. It was entitled: "the ramblings of a mad man.txt". Here it is in all its insane madness (spelling mistakes included…):
"My idea is very simple - I want to write my own long-running animation show. Initially it would probably be say, a 20 minute pilot but this would purely be enough to set up the characters and scenarios for a full series.
I want me and whoever I get involved to be rich and famous and to be able to look back on their lives and say "I made that". That was my contribution to the world and everyone else will damn well know about it. Like we said, I'm tired of procrastination. I'm tired of daydreaming. I'm tired of answering the fucking phone to a bunch of ungrateful cunts who get paid more than I ever fucking will if i carry on the way I'm going. I want to bring the schoolfriends back together and create something unique. I want to be able to meet Chris Morris some day and say "I made something that can stand up with the kind of stuff you did". I appreciate this may be difficult but I'm not in the mood to think through the technicalities of it all right about now.
My idea is something I've had for a very long time and I want it to create our own little world of characters and places that will be as recognisable as Springfield, Peckham, Fawlty Towers or Quahog. I want to create a british animation that will stand up to anything America has produced and be as globally accepted as them. I want it to have it's own look and feel, something you can buy into, no matter how ridiculous and absurd it is because people care about the pixels moving about on their TV screen as much as they care about their own friends and colleagues.
As for the actual animation itself, I want to move away from the family-based/school based animations that seem to have become de-rigeur these days. Sicne Family Guy i can't think of anything truly distinctive, nothing that has captured my attention. I've tried to get into Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken and various other non-animation based comedies (the IT crowd, etc) but nothing has jumped out at me. I see no other choice than to take matters into our own hands.
I want to base a comedy around a group of friends (and enemies) who are in their twenties, much like us. There's no point writing about something if you haven't experienced it. Yes, I intend to have wacky moments and flashbacks, that's part of the visually explosive nature of animation, the fact that you CAN do things that you couldn't do in real-life but I still want it to be based around reality.
I want it to draw on a wide range of influences, from stuff like Family Guy and South Park to non-animated comedies like Only Fools, Brass Eye and Monty Python. I want the look of the series to draw heavily on the main character, in that it will have a distinctly Mexican/generic Latin look to it, even though the surroundings are familiar. I want it to be easy on the eye so it draws people in with beatiful lighting and character animation but lock people in once they're in by firstly having a lot of jokes in it, and secondly by having storylines and character development that make sense. I want it ultimately to have a natural end. I don't want to see my characters wearing the same blue shorts and orange T-shirt and staying the same age for 20 years. I want to have character ageing and storyline progression that you would see in something like Only Fools and Horses. Births, deaths, weddings, relationships, hatred and all the other wonderful little things that crop up in life. That's the kind of thing that will help us to stand out. It's almost as if it's a sort of statement: Yes, we're pretending it's real but you know ultimately that it's not but you don't care, you buy into it because you can appreciate being in those situations.
I want the humour to be brutal at times, I want it to deliberately shock people to get their attention, but I also want it to have it's silly moments as there's many different moods you can be in and comedy doesn't have a defining style, it needs to adapt to survive. I want it to have sad, poignant moments in it but are always rooted back in comedy. I like to think that no matter what happens I can always raise a smile or a laugh to something and I'd like the animation to reflect that.
I hope this makes sense, I know it's very vague but I think of it more as some kind of manifesto. I will come to you with more actual character descriptions, locations (probably more your side of things) and actual plot lines. I have an idea for main A and B storylines and some jokes that would fit but I need to get these all down together, so I'll keep you posted.
Cheers for listening to my insane stream of consciousness, it's very much appreciated.
P.S. - I'm provisionally going to title it: "The Cautionary Tales of Esteban Sanchez and Others". Rolls off the fucking tongue, don't it?""
So that was that. Luckily my friend was thinking the same things, albeit slightly less psychotically REDRUM as my stream of consciousness, but he too wanted to do something. A plan was formed, which I'll talk about tomorrow.
For now, take a look at some of my friend's animation ideas here: http://chulk607.blogspot.com/
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