Now that I've got an idea for a film, the idea needs to be fleshed out. The idea needs to be turned into a story and start to develop some ideas for characters and settings.

The idea has been mulling around in my head for the past week. There are two different beginnings to the story that I have come up with. The middle part of the story is mainly sight gags, and am not 100% sure how I want to end the story. The beauty of doing this work up front is that nothing is written in stone and can be changed very easy.

First, I see my main character as a cross between Mr. Bean (performed brilliantly by Rowan Atkinson) and the characters drawn by the late Don Martin (of MAD magazine fame). I always loved the drawing style of Don Martin (and his humor). I don't see any talking or dialogue in the film as I have always loved comedy based on visuals.

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There may be a dog in the story as well. For the dog, I see it as either being a really cute little dog in the style of Chuck Jones, or something along the lines of the Ugliest Dog In The World contenders.

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There will also be an alien race, consisting mainly of an eye. Kind of something like in Monster Inc.

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So, here is the 1^st beginning to the story.

The main character is in a pet store buying some toys for his pet dog. He is wandering around trying out some of the squeaky toys, etc. He stumbles across the laser pointing toys. He envisions himself as a Jedi wielding a light saber. Excited about it, he purchases the laser and leaves the store.

The 2^nd beginning to the story.

The main character is in a pet story buying some toys for his pet dog. He has the dog on a leash and is trying out the different toys with the dog to see which it would like. The dog doesn't seem impressed by any of the offerings and is sitting there looking very bored. When the main character tries a laser pointer toy, the dog goes nuts trying to chase the little red dot. Happy with the new find, he purchases the laser and leaves the store.

The middle of the story.

It is nighttime, and the main character goes out into his backyard with the laser pointer, accompanied by the dog. He opens the packaging and tosses the empty package on the picnic table. The camera does a close up on a warning label about not shining the laser into someone's eyes. The main character starts playing with the laser as the dog looks on.

This is where the visual sight gags start. The main character has no idea that he is hitting all of these targets. The main character keeps turning the laser on and off as he plays with and each time the target gets progressively bigger…

1) A small ant (gets incinerated)
2) A bird in a tree (gets zapped in the eyes). Throughout the rest of the film, the blinded bird will be flying around in the background crashing into different objects.
3) A pilot in a plane flying overhead.
4) An astronaut in the space station. Laser comes in through a window, bounces around reflective material until it hits the astronaut in the eyes.
5) One of the lunar landers on the moon. The laser cuts through the flag pole and the flag falls over.
6) The laser zips across the galaxy. This is done by zooming away from the main character on earth, through space, and zooming in to an alien world, straight down the lens of a huge telescope. The alien (which is essentially a huge eye with some arms and legs, screams out and starts rubbing his eye. Another alien comes over to see what the fuss is about. Of course, the laser is turned off now and the 2^nd alien looks into the telescope and sees nothing out of the ordinary. The 1^st alien hesitantly looks into the telescope again just as the laser has been turned on again and screams once more. Not sure how many times to try this gag. Anyway, the 2^nd alien eventually gets zapped. We then see the two aliens in front of an alien council trying to visually explain what happened.

The ending of the story.

I am not really sure how to end this.

- Do the aliens launch an invasion force to Earth?
- Do the aliens use a huge ACME style laser and shoot back, incinerating the main character and leaving the dog to play with the laser?
- Does something entirely different happen?

I guess this is something that I will have to figure out, hopefully by the next time I update here.

Have fun…
Al

Good idea! That's alot of work right there though. Phew!

I thought you were going to use the AT-AT model for the dog. lol

For the start, I don't see why you can't use both ideas. It goes with all the second idea and then at the end the main character goes out of the shop getting more excited with his purchase and playing with it like a light saber.

You might think of a way to explain why this lazer is so powerful. Maybe it's an alien bomb....the same ones trying to observe the explosion. (The character could use up the batteries playing with it)

At the end another idea is for the aliens to get a mirror to shine back the laser back to the character.....he could be playing away with his dog while different things (house, shed, tree) get obliterated which he's oblivious to. Then he could shine it into one of those radio telescope antennas which magnifies it and destroys the alien planet.

Finally at the end, the character gets board with his laser and throws it in the bin. He then sees the carnage behind him.

wow. that's a lot to model and set up!




How about aliens are already poised to attack the earth and this guy unknowingly foils their attack by disintegrating their ships.

Is there is an Alien Cat somewhere in the story?

Perhaps who in the end, turns on his "Alienoids" , to never have to be made to chase that dum' ol' huge ACME laser again...

Hey folks...

Sorry, I haven't posted here in a while, but I am on a training course near Chicago. Very big city with lots of busy highways and toll roads.

We are on a lunch break right now, and am getting the opportunity to post a quick update. I have been working on some sketches for the characters. Don't have any way of scanning them in to show you, but when I get home next week, I will try to post some images.

Nancy, you are truly a gifted artist. It is no wonder you did so many of the textures on TWO and SO. Totaly cracked me up when I saw what you did to the Monsters, Inc. image. And when you flick between the original image and yours, you did a lot of major and subtle mods to it. Wonderful work. Unfortunately, there won't be any cat's this go-around.

Ken and Rob, liked your ideas on how to end the film. My son liked the idea of everything around him being destroyed, but the main character is totally oblivous to all the destruction.

Ken, once you mentioned about it being a lot of work, I started thinking about all the different elements and sets that would need to be modelled. You are right about that and things may need to be scaled back a bit. I will go through the extras DVD that I have to see what I may be able to re-use.

But again, this is all part of the learning process of planning and making a movie.

Al

Well, I spent some time going through the extras DVD, and found 3 different models that I think will work as the basis for my 3 characters. The models are Howie, Waffy Dog and Metabean. I will either use the models as a guide to create new characters or modify the existing models to suit my needs.

Al

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Good choices!

Damn! You're half way there already!

Don't forget to credit the creator. (Alain I think?)

Well, I went and bought myself a nice new shiny laptop on Friday. I really love working on laptops as it gives me the freedom to move around the house so I can be in the same room as my wife as I work.

Anyways, it is a Compaq Presario A900 series laptop, Intel dual core, 3 GB ram, 250 GB hard drive. It also has a 17" widescreen with a full size keyboard and separate keypad. Got my A:M web subscription switched over to the new laptop and things are great except for one thing. The laptop has Vista on it. Don't like Vista. Not one bit, at all.

Before switching my web subscription, I tried removing Vista and putting XP Pro on the laptop. After having to disable the SATA controller, the install went smoothly. OOPS! HP/Compaq didn't have any XP drivers for the laptop! Eventually found what I needed on the web except for two things. The WI-FI and Sound devices. I had spent all day Saturday messing around with this and eventually decided to go back to Vista and give it a try.

Did I mention that I really hate Vista? After switching my web subscription, I started to re-install my other software. The first piece of software that I installed popped up a warning. Something about there being known issues with the software and Vista. The solution is to upgrade my software so that it will work with Vista. Okay, let me try another piece of software. Same thing.

So now I have reached the point where I loathe Vista. I am going to go home tonight, copy all of my data files back to my desktop and trim down the files I have on the laptop. Then I am going to Ghost the drive so I have a backup of the existing system. It took quite a while to go through and unload a lot of the extra pre-installed software (that I can't see anyone ever using). Then I am going to give it a go again with XP.

If I still can't get it to work, than I will put Vista back on in it's original condition and return the laptop as it is pretty much useless to me as it is. I will keep an eye open for a slightly older model that can be downgraded to XP.

Wonder what my blood pressure was after messing around with this darned thing.....

Al

Have you tried MS "Mojave"? It's suppose to be much better than Vista.



I heard a rumor that Mac users were buying up all the existing copies of XP for use with boot camp and parallels.

-vern

Is that the UAC that's popping up? You can disable that in the security center. There's no way you could use a computer with that set to on. I'm on Vista and haven't experienced any other similar problems. Can you expand more so maybe we can help. Maybe a screenshot or two too.

I'm just now trying out my new laptop with Vista on it I don't much like Vista so far.....What's UAC?

UAC = User Account Control

Everytime you do anything the least bit administrative, it comes up with - Do you really want to do this?

I don't know the exact error, because I went back to XP. You can turn it off, and then you get warnings that User Account Control is turned off

My kids like Vista better, though, and I do like Office 2007.

It's a bit of a turnaround that there weren't XP drivers, normally it's the no Vista drivers that is a problem.

Yeah, I have a red shield hidden in my tray. Doesn't bother me though.

Drivers aren't so much a problem anymore. I got my old printer working with Vista. And more drivers are coming out every day.

Anyway.....back to making a movie Tralfaz.

OK I found the UAC. How do I disable it? I don't see an off button!

Sorry. It's in the user accounts in the control panel.....

thanks Ken

Sorry about not updating this post lately. I've been spending time on getting my new laptop all set up and working on an entry for the Sci-Fi/Fantasy contest, as well as getting ready for vacation next week with my wife and son.

Once I get back from vacation, I plan on getting back to this little project.

So, until then, enjoy the rest of the summer vacation and keep modelling and animating!

Al

Hey gang!

Back from vacation and am going to be getting back to this project again.

Thought about it quite a bit while I was gone, and I really want to have the main character like a Mr. Bean character. So, I picked up the Best of Mr. Bean and am going to use it as reference for creating a Mr. Bean type character. Hope to have the first sketches in the next couple of days.

One of the things we did was go on a 1 hour cruise of Lake Muskoka on an old steam ship. Really beautiful scenery and very calm waters. It was kind of cool looking at the multi-million dollar cottages on these little islands. Then I noticed the waves created by the steam ship and how they interacted with other surface waves and started wondering on how to animate those types of things. Even on vacation, I can't get away from animating!!

Anyway, glad to be back and looking forward to gettting started again...

Al