The blog of a person....yeah that sounds good.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

I’ve waited very patiently just to let you know who should run this show

I rarely talk about things I make in terms of what their plot is. Usually I just post a few screenshots. But I usually dont go much into what future projects are about. Maybe because I feel it should be a surprise or mainly because I dont like talking about them.

Either way.

A friend of mine by the name of Jacob Seed wanted an explanation for this. What is that? Well, its a long story. The short story is that this was a cartoon I never completed which I sent into a spam collab years ago.

The long LONG story about it is that sometime in 2004 or 2005 I had an idea for a cartoon series I wanted to do.
I fiddled with the idea for quite a while, coming up with exactly what I wanted, finding the soundtrack I wanted (some old celtic music I drummed up), and then trying to put it together.
I soon came to the realization that I did not have the necessary skills to make this series on my own. I had no voice actors, and I couldn't draw very well. Still can't but I have a nice tablet now.
And I realized I'd rather not bother doing this thing if it was going to come out looking amateurish.

Since then, I've revisited the idea a few times on occasion. Refining it. Not much has changed though, since then. I still thought it was a pretty good idea, by my standards anyway.

Here is the original cast as I first drew them all together in 2004 or 05.

Of all these characters the first one was the Chickenfish. I created this character at some point in high school. The Chickenfish is great at retaining information, hence why its a valuable asset at the LaLa Land Corporation that most of the rest of those characters work in. The Chickenfish talks entirely in rhyming limericks.

Thorg is one of the main characters. He owns a company called LaLa land. What the company does exactly is a mystery. But its extremely profitable and everyone in the city wants to work there. Loud, opinionated, but very generous and kind (and short) Thorg is simultaneously the best and worst boss you could want. He scrambles around all day causing as much joyful chaos in the company as he can to help keep his employees from realizing a very strange and paranormal fact about their work schedules. Which I will get into later.

Thorg is one of the most important characters in this whole thing. Because in all technical terms, he's the villain of the story. But he's not evil. He wants to be your buddy and hang out with you. His only sin is wanting everyone to know who he is. Really badly.

He's gone through quite a few design changes.
From that original drawing up there.
To this next drawing.


Fucking LOL at the watermark I draped all over this. As if anyone would want to steal this horrible thing. God I was dumb.


And here is a somewhat more recent design I did of him. Honestly the final design will probably combine the square-torso of the original with the black limbs of that other one.

In college, I even used Thorg in my first hand-drawn walk cycle and turnaround. Take note, these next two videos will hurt your eyes because the animation is so awful. I had no real formal training yet before I did these.


And here is a somewhat better but still awful walk cycle.




The other main character, and the one whom the story starts off with was Melvin. Melvin was also the first character I ever tried animating in flash. But back then he was alot shorter and his body was a triangle.

The story began with Melvin moving to a new nameless city to work at a new job in Lala Land. Escaping from a rather troubling past life to a new one made him feel a bit better about his current circumstances. But he was still rather miserable.
He moves into his new apartment and goes to bed.
He wakes up the next day and turns on his laptop, and there is a video sent to him from Thorg himself welcoming him to the company. Personalized. He looks outside to see the sun rise over the giant fantastical city he's moved into and feels optimistic for once.

(and here is a blobby thing from the original storyboard of this scene)


Melvin does not know that this will be the last time he sees his apartment.

And so he merrily strolls through the streets of the city like Brad Garrett in that new soda commercial.
He meets Thorg's wife outside the door. Originally this characters name was Fina but thats probably going to change as I just dont think it suits her.

I'll just use Fina for now. Thorg's wife, and the 2nd head of the company. She's a bit of a magician and has a bit of an interesting spell cast on the building. She's a master at solving problems and tends to stray off into other subjects when she talks. Much like her husband, she is very loud and friendly. Almost too friendly. Unlike Thorg she is very tall, being some giraffelant creature.
While she's not entirely sure of how ethical what she and her husband have done to the company is, she cant argue with results.

So what exactly have they done?
Well you see the whole reason this company does so well (and the reason I named it Lala Land in a fit of pretentious pseudo-symbolism) is because noone in the company ever takes a break. And no-one ever goes home. No punching in or punching out. Once you're in, you're in.
The spell that Thorg and Fina have weaved over this place has caused noone to notice. People have been working nonstop at Lala Land for years without ever noticing.
And for good reason. The leaders of the board have taken great care into making sure that work here is as relaxing and distracting as possible. No clocks. No calendars. And the windows are hexed so that it always seems like its daytime inside.

But, everyone is happy.

Magic, however, isn't perfect. And as the weeks pass Melvin starts to realize that he seems to be stuck in some sort of infinite loop. He knows something is wrong, but he cant tell what. He slowly begins to grow very tired and depressed as time unknowingly passes by. But he does get to know his fellow workers and Thorg pretty well over the course of all this.





As luck would have it, the security outside of Lala Land didnt take his laptop when he first entered.

He switches it on and realizes that time has indeed passed in a great amount while he's been inside.

In a great panic he dodges downstairs and out the door of the company. He makes it about 50 feet away before some ghostly magical arms spring out of the company doors and drag him back inside where he finds himself face to face with a few of his co-workers and Fina who warmly shakes his hand and congratulates him on being one of the few employees who was smart enough to figure out the ruse.

He soon finds himself in a very large silver and golden boardroom with a few of his coworkers sitting at a long table, with Thorg at the head.

and this is where Thorg's intentions come in. Thorg is tired of being such an insignificant individual.

Feeling much like the man from Stephen Crane's book War Is King and Other Lines he feels that he has so much to contribute to the world that the whole universe would see him as a significant figure. A bit self-righteous, sure. But Thorg just wants to help everyone he can and to inspire people, in his own twisted way.

So he decided not long ago that any employees clever enough to realize they hadnt gotten out of their work days were going to help him become the most significant person in the world.

And they meet every day in this gold and silver room to sit down and chat about the best ideas to do this.
The best ideas put forward thus far had been:

a.) carve Thorg's likeness into the sun.

b.) attempt to take over another continent in the friendliest way possible and name it Thorgopia and make it a perfect world of no pain, hunger, or sorrow.

c.) create a product inside Lala land that would benefit every single person in the universe. like a time machine, or something that wards off death.


However not all employees came up with good ideas.
Fit (the small gremlin creature in the original sketch near the top who follows Thorg in a creepy fanatical manner) had the bright idea of assassinating the current leader of the principality, and then getting Thorg elected to take his place, once all the chaos had calmed down.
Thorg laughs very hard at this idea. But not in really a derisive way. Giving Fit the idea that perhaps the bossman approves and so, despite his co-workers disapproving looks, Fit decides he's going to set in motion, the cogs to make this idea come true.
Fit then hires Wiwi, a hitman from a watery moon. This sets up a whole chain of events I just dont feel like typing about.

Melvin secretly decides that he's going to try and find a way of bringing this company down, as he very much believes its practices of being unethical. So he puts forth the idea of getting Thorg his own channel on the international visual entertainment waves so Thorg can reach as many people as possible.

Melvin eventually falls in love with one of the camera operators on this station and the two of them manage to capture Fit hiring Wiwi to kill the president on camera. Fit finds out and proceeds to do his very best to get this film (and get rid of Melvin in the process). Melvin attempts unsuccessfully to sneak hidden messages into Thorg's broadcasts. Thorg eventually realizes that being popular doesn't mean people will have faith in you, and eventually sacrifices his airtime into trying to alert everyone that one of his workers is trying to get people killed in his name.

The Chickenfish meanwhile rewrites the Bible substituting Thorg for many of the key biblical characters. So the stories end up about Thorg parting the red sea, being the savior, turning random assholes into pillars of salt, etc etc. Fina later tries to have it made into a musical.

And then this happens:



And thats basically it.
Yes it was a horrible idea, which I still plan to maybe one day do. Maybe as a comic instead of a cartoon. Who knows.
The original plan and storyboards was to set this up into various episodes of varying lengths.

However a project this large would require alot more work. I'd need to get music composed, voice actors, good sound effects.
Not the stuff I decide to do just for the hell of it like this:


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ONTO ANOTHER SUBJECT THAT IS ALOT MORE INTERESTING


My lovely little music player that hovers in the top right corner of this blog that makes sweet tender love to your ears.....can only hold 200 songs.

I just learned this the other night. And I was so sad. I looked it in the eye and said QUIT PLAYIN GAMES WITH MY HEART. WITH MY HEART. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN FROM THE START. WITH MY HEART.

So I've been having to delete songs to add new ones. Feels bad, man.


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Those of you who havent given up on the videogame industry entirely due to Bald Brown Colored Space Shooter Game #4483845 + Nintendo Family Party Game Waggle Fest should probably know by now that a new 2d Mario Brothers game is coming out.


When it was announced at E3 a few months ago I was the happiest fucker in the world. I loved the new DS Mario Brothers game (despite it being short). It was a return to form for Mario. Using physics and really hard jumping puzzles to create a stirring experience.


The coolest thing about the new one coming out for the Wii is that someone at Nintendo remembered that Bowser actually used to have kids. Yeah. A whole bunch of them. Whom, after Super Mario World, never appeared again except for brief cameos in the Mario rpg games.

So, seeing Bowser Jr (bowser's new son/clone) AND the old Bowser Kids from the late 80's and early 90's altogether again makes me a HAPPY HORSE. A HAPPY HORSE GOD DAMN.

And they even retained their old character designs.



awwww! Look how cute they are!
And their wands still shoot squares triangles and circles like every other magic-toting thing in the mario world.

I also really like the grainy texture that they have on their surfaces. I wish they'd do that to Mario and the other main characters. The shading on the mains is so smooth it gives the gang a very sterilized look. Personally I think the best mario and luigi is the one from the Mario and Luigi rpg games.



These are great designs. They have big colorless cartoony eyes. Rosy noses. Striped socks. And a green tint. The letters on their hats are black. Their bottom lip isnt poking out from under their mustaches. Their chins dont jut out like on the 3d ones. These two should look like this all the time. Seriously.

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And as usual, work continues on the violent new cartoon for Skoo and Weebl.

Here is a screenshot.

You may wonder why the main character is eying this fat man's rotund butt. Well its because he's about to blast it off with his pistol, thats why.



And I think thats it.

This blog post is filled with more horrors than most, and for that I apologize. I hope this glimpse into a failed cartoon project has been an eye-opening experience for all you Amish folk who took time out of your busy days of churning cows and milking butter to read my blog on the internet.

3 comments:

Sparkpro said...

Your idea certainly has me interested.
Well, good luck with all your current and future endeavors.

rainbowrideralpha said...

Yeah that sounds like a very interesting series

But like you said it's one of those ambiguous projects that takes so much man power to produce that it's hard to materialize anything. In my opinion though I think you're capable of doing it.

It just takes a long time to get something out there

I mean it john k is still pitching that jerry liquor program or whatever that's called and how long has he been wanting to make that

always relate what you can to ren and stimpy and john k


but you're still working on polypeptide first right?

ZSL said...

"always relate what you can to ren and stimpy and john k"

oh god no :C

and poly is on hiatus until i finish this new violent bloody blood film