STORY REEL!

I'm reverse engineering here, back with another leica reel, this time for the entire film--it's a couple of minutes long, but worth the wait I think, if just for the Firehouse Five Plus Two soundtrack. I think more could've been made of the script and the visuals, but I tend to think of this as a decent jumping off point rather than anything ready to go; the soundtrack and basic ideas certainly have a lot of potential for entertainment and plus-ing.

When the music for the second half kicks in, imagine the cleverist animation from Toot Whistle, the Brave Engineer and Alice and Wonderland, and the Mary Blair-iest staging you can. Fun, no? Can you listen to it and not want to animate to it?

To watch the reel, please click the image above! Also, for interests sake, I encourage you to rewatch the post below to see how they compare. Lemme know what you think!

REEL!

Click the image above for some leica reel action! I know--it's embarrassing; yes, that's my voice. The music is performed by the Firehouse 5 + 2, and the quicktime is hosted by Mr. James Robertson. Many thanks!

(ps. while you're watching it, imagine it's designed by Tom Oreb, animated by Marc Davis and colour styled by Eyvind Earle--that's certainly how I'd love to see it.)

SO...

Sorry I haven't had much time to post lately; I've been trying to keep up with work--and with a life that's fallen behind. Accept this placeholder and hopefully I can put some videos up next week--some content from the included DVD. Have a good weekend folks!

STORYBOARDS 2

This next little peek illustrates Mike meeting inspiration: an older ONE MAN BAND, who shares his enthusiasm and introduces him to performance and musicianship. The torch is soon passed and mikey sets forth to practice his vocation.

Above and below, some older OMB studies. At first I thought it would be confusing to have more than one OMB in the short, but in the end decided that there was no better way to introduce Mike to the idea of the OMB--he's already got the natural inclinations (with pots and pans), and this was the most direct way of providing him with guidance, encouragement and direction. Anyway, that's the way it works, right? You see something and you're like, "Man! I wanna do that!"


The idea of lineage is one that I like too, and one that I'm afraid we sometimes forget in the world of animation. Robert Henri called it the 'brotherhood", and suggested that it connects all of us through a common appreciation and thoughtfulness for art, and thus humanity and its truths. Part of the idea of this OMB project was to try to do well for the old Disney greats; to try to live up to the standards of quality they set and the type of well natured entertainment they encouraged through films generous with appeal and rich with character.












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STORYBOARDS 1

We're heading into the home stretch now--I'm running out of material to post. Below are some thumbnails which turned miraculously into my final reel, a section of which follows. As far as I can remember, these are tinier than is reasonable; I'll see if I can find the page they're all from...





And these then are the panels for my story reel--a more explicit, developed version of the scenarios I'd imagined and thumbnailed. Whereas the story pitch boards require a bit of explanation, these should speak for themselves. I'm in talks with the Iron Scythe as to the possibility of throwing a quicktime up here so you can all watch the sequence for yourselves, but I guess that'll happen when it does. For now, a sampling of the drawings. Hope you enjoy 'em.








Here are a couple variations on that last panel where he has turtle legs for some reason. I thought it was cute but a little too weird; he looks happy though.

STORY SKETCHES 3

Below, some roughs.


I'm a believer in the idea that the visuals should contribute something different than the text and the sound, and at various times vintage photo albums, horse racing, gophers with earmuffs, old italian men sitting on their stoops, calisthenics, drunken relatives, an elephant and a full fledge marching band crept into my story; needless to say, they were cut. Some fun ideas though.





There's also a couple pages of notes in here because, you know, I do a fair bit of thinking and writing and planning about this stuff too--trying to figure out arcs and patterns, logical progressions and fun bits of business.





Also, some closer ups of some of the pitch boards, because I know they're small in the sequential version. If there are any others you fellas would particularly like to see, let me know.

STORY SKETCHES 2

These are my final story sketch pages; they didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but what are you gonna do? My production schedule urged me on. I had conceived of a few sequences within the film pretty completely, but most of it took a lot of brainstorming to figure out; a lot of rethinking, reboarding and rewriting.