Animation ideas/ Script

For the upcoming animated short i will be producing, i have brainstormed some quick ideas that my short could be about. The short itself will only be around 15 seconds long, so the ideas are just basic concepts.

• Ball rolls around, then stretches out into character.
• Character presses button, unlocks gem they are trying to steal but breaks gem.
• Character hides from car in bush, jumps out then gets chased by the car.
• Character eats sweet, then floats away
• Character runs off of a cliff but doesn’t fall yet. They glance down, then look at the camera before falling off screen.

From this list, i decided to develop ideas 2 and 4, as i like those concepts best.

Idea 1 – Gem thief.

This idea would focus on a robber or thief attempting to steal a precious gem, only to break it in the process. It would start with the gem being centre of the screen, with a protective bubble surrounding it and a button to release it from the bubble. The robber would then sneak into frame, looking around nervously before focusing on the gem. He would then notice and press the button, releasing the gem. He would then gain a smug look on his face, thinking he has pulled a great heist, before attempting to grab the gem while looking away. This causes him to fumble and knock the gem off of it’s pedestal, shattering it onto the floor. The robber would then realise his mistake with a look of shock on his face, before looking sadly at the floor and walking back off screen. I like this idea, as it has a simple concept but it allows me to experiment with different animation techniques, such as follow through on the character knocking the pedestal and the gem teetering off the edge or animating the character in differing emotions, such as nervous, smug and sad.

Idea 2 – Inflating sweet.

This idea revolves around a character finding a sweet, investigating and then eating the sweet, before puffing up and floating away off screen. This starts similarly to my first idea, but this time it is a sweet sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the screen. A character would walk onto screen and notice the sweet. They would then look around for anyone else, before shrugging and then eating the sweet. I could also have the sweet be thrown up into the air in an arc before being eaten. They would look happy, before they start to inflate like a balloon before floating away off screen. I like this idea as it uses cause and effect with the sweet and the character and i could use techniques such as squash and stretch when the character inflates.

Both of these would be set against a blank background, so the objects and characters would be the main focus of the short, reminiscent of old Nickelodeon idents and how they look.

I decided to explore the thief idea more, and developed a storyboard for how the animation could play out.

This is only a rough sketch of the idea, and will most likely change when i think about character design or building the animation.