Planet Cuckoo // Studio Intro

This is short animated intro for our Planet Cuckoo Studio. That will be used for our future animation.

Character Design // The Granny

Makeup/Accessories/Details

Glasses No. 1

Hairstyles

Accessories

Glasses No. 2

Combined Elements

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Taking some elements of a stereotypical Granny character design with accessories, glasses and hairstyles and combining them together to get an overall idea of where we are going to take the design of the Granny and how we are going to model Moom. 

Character Design // Silhouettes

Some of the character designs, drawn as silhouettes. For a rough understanding of their shapes, postures and personalities.

Granny Silhouettes:

 

Nervous Guy Silhouettes:

 

Blind Guy Silhouettes:

Character Design Sketches // Granny

Script and Final Ideas

Animatic #2

Animatic

Collaboration // Roles (Updated)

Collaboration // Updated Ideas #2

Structure:

• 3 Skits for the granny
• 2 Skits for nervous person.
• 2 Skits for the blind person

 Idea overall:

1. Granny:
Tries to put key in the key hole with her shaking hands.
Puts on her racing gloves/helmet.
Accelerating in same place. *Vroom-Vroom*

2. Nervous Person:
He is already in the car.
As long as he does not touch the wheel, he is fine.
Smiles back at instructor.
Looks at the wheel - (intense "Kill Bill vol.1" music)
Touches the wheel - camera focus zooms out. (Making the view bendend - "Reversed Fish Eye effect")?

3. Granny:
Distant racing music plays.
In the distance we see car passing by really fast.
Camera up close in the cars inside.
We can see how granny is changing gears and accelerating faster.
Instructor is trapped at the back of his seat, holding onto the seat handle and screaming.

4. Blind Person:
Sits in the car.
Gives the stick to the instructor.
Accidentally turns on the window cleaner.
Instructor is confused.

5. Nervous Person:
Nervous person is checking his mirrors, nonstop, only to be sure that everything is perfect.
Instructor taps on his clipboard.
Nervous person starts up the car, but does not check his gears and drives off backwards.

6. Blind Person:
We can see the window cleaner is still on.
Blind person keeps bumping into people. (there is some people already on the car roof, you can see how the legs are hanging).
Instructor looks back and front with his mouth covered.

7. Granny:
Granny looks for a parking slot and grins.?
Swiftly drifts into one of the parking slots between two cars.
Granny fist bumps her fist in the air, while Instructor is breathing heavily with all of his hair messed up.

Collaboration // OGR

Collaboration // Updated Ideas

Overall structure of film:

For the overall structure of our animation for "The worst person to.. start driving" we are going to have three characters enter into the driving instructors car, the characters are as follows:

• The Instructor: An upper crust serious man who is all business and doesn't like when his authority is faltered.
• The Granny: An elderly woman who is extremely hot-headed, loud and brash. She thinks she knows everything about driving and is completely deluded and oblivious to everything.
• The overly anxious lanky character: A man who is extremely lanky and gangly and who can barely fit in the car. He is very nervous about driving and makes mistakes along the way.
• The blind man: A blind man that starts driving but the audience doesn't know he is blind as we are using expectation against them.

In Detail:
We want to use expectation against the viewer so that they do not see the joke coming and to make sure that they laugh out loud. The structure of the characters will be along the lines of either the granny or the anxious person first with the blind man last.

As for how the jokes will play out we are thinking about possibly having the joke evolve over time to an extreme with cuts back and forth between the different characters so that towards the end of each skit it shows the most extreme version of the joke for each character, for example:

The blind man is driving the car but the audience doesn't know he is blind yet, he runs somebody over the scene cuts to the granny character shouting forbidden words at the driving instructor then the scene cuts back to the blind man but this time there is multiple people hanging on for dear life on the bonnet of the car as he yawns, the instructor is horrified.

We were also considering having the instructor visually looking more haggard over time with bags under his eyes and his hair jutting out showing the stress of the worst type of person to start driving. The car could also possibly take a beating with possible dents appearing and the inner environment of the car changing as the animation evolves.

After the climax of each joke has happened we were considering using a "Failed" stamp (Fig. 1) over the scene with a hard knock sound effect to determine that that character has failed at driving when the most extreme version of the joke has been told and to move on to telling the climax of the next characters skit.

Fig. 1

We want to frame our animation using the passage of time by possibly using a letterbox view and having either the days of the week or months on the letterbox just under the video with possibly 

having the characters name along side the time (Fig. 2). Seasons could be a possibility too and how the weather would affect the character and their delusion towards driving.

Fig. 2

As for camera angles we want to keep it as less fussy as possible so that the attention and humour is on the characters with the main camera being at the front of the car showing both characters and possibly another camera for the side of the instructor to show the characters entering the car. Another possible camera could be a top view of the car from a far distance to show the granny character turning the wrong way after the driving instructor told her to turn the opposite. 

We want to keep the overall art style along the lines of Muareens Driving school with everything reflecting the early nineties, so plain, muted dated colours and nothing too modern as that could retract from the humour. We want the car to reflect the time period too with it feeling like a bit of a banger but not too old as it is a car for learning to drive so it should be in working order. We do want the car to be relatively small as to bring out the humour in all the characters, especially with the tall awkward man.

Set/Background Ideas:

From watching many animated shows when the characters are driving in a car the houses and such pass them in the loop, we were thinking about using the same method in our animation. We are not quite sure how to achieve this yet, possibly using a plane and painting a texture on top of it and just moving it across the x or z axis and possibly combining 3D elements such as houses with this so that the plain doesn't look too flat. We are not sure yet what the background could entail and if we choose different seasons how this would effect the background. 

Props needed include the following:

The car, A dog, A walking stick, A clipboard, Along with all the various accessories, clothing and hairstyles that the characters will have.

Collaboration // Influence Maps

Driving Instructor

Granny

Nervous/Scared Guy

Blind Man

Car

Influence Map // The Driving Instructor

Collaboration // Acting Class #1

Acting class was a lot of fun. We have really cemented our ideas for our characters for the animation and through Dan's help we have a much clearer idea of where we are going to go with them. Our character ideas for "The worst person to... start driving" are first the driving instructor who is a serious upper crust type who hates having his authority questioned, Second is a nervous lanky person who can barely fit in the car and third is a brash temperamental Granny who thinks she knows everything.

The upper crust instructor 

The lanky,gangly, nervous person

The brash, temperamental granny

Research // Videos & Influence Maps

Collaboration // Roles