Story Solutions.

#341

Hi Lughs,

Great improvement from your first draft!!

Good choice with the first one, I would’ve selected that one as
well out of the three. So good job.

It’s simpler and lighter than the other two but it works better
from the story standpoint and is something that is easier to grasp.
And the Kung Fu style you plan to incorporate meshes better with
a lighter theme anyway.

Though I also somewhat like the apron idea of the second piece.
So if you can add a few more gardening tools/gear in the first
story, it’ll add to the humor.

The last story most mirrors your original idea and I like that you’ve
simplified it. It flows much better.
But the ending is a little, “Huh? Uh…okay.”
Because it doesn’t really make a strong impression or convey the
purpose that I think you wanted to convey. So if you get a chance
to work on it, maybe change the ending or build a stronger setup to
support the last scene so that the audience can tie back or reference
the it to something that happened before in the story.

The idea is that you want your audience to respond to it with,
“Hmm…that’s interesting” rather than “Uh,…what was that for?”

But, overall, great improvement!

ThinkStory

#342

hi ThinkStory,
thanks for your time! Everything you wrote is so helpfull and i don’t have an idea how to return our gratefulness.

I’m doing my final school project, 1-2 minutes animation.I was very much inspired with one show, Cirque du soleil. I liked those colors, costumes and full caracters, and all those stories told with dance and performances. I’d like to do my animation without words, only with body and dance lenguage.
My starting idea was about one girl (not real, some girl one the other planet that is all dark in brown and dark colors) but she is still trying to find some happiness and she looks very optimistic and curious. She is walking on the street and looking aroun like she is there for the first time trying to find something new and fun, and suddenly she sow little red shiny ball jumping around. when ball jump over the barrier, she wanted to see where ball came from and suddenly she was in some totaly different place, with beautifull plants, colors… and her look was changed, she was in color and looking much more beautifull.
Ok, to make it little bit shorter… She sow some boy. He is from thet world but they look like they are same race, just he is colored anh happy. They dance together, fell in love and she wanted to bring him home. They find some “door” to that dimension, and when they were home together, all planet start geting more colors. Three got leaves, there grow some beautifull flowers, buildings were diferent… the point is that with love everything is different.
However, I read this posts,and the more I was thinking I was more in mess. I got some inspiration from Alice in the Wanderland, and thought that maybe at the begining she can fallow some cute butterfly or little bird from her planet, instead of rabbit. Also, I’ve been watching American beauty and find that roses beatifull methaphore in all movie, so i’d like that bird or something to be metaphore of love and serching… At the end, I’d like to say that life is how we see it.
The ting is that I’m doing everything by myself, from skript and caracters, to modeling, animation, post production, so it is really not supose to be more than 2 minutes. also, I sow a lot of animation that have some nice message or stoy, but they are sooo boring, too long or whatever…
I hope you can help me and give me some good directions.

Thank you very very much

#343

Hi boobetty,

here’s an idea that may help your story convey the point “that with love
everything is different.”

Split the story into two parts (you pretty much have that but emphasize on it).
The first part being the girl interacting with things in her world.
The second part being the girl and boy interacting with things in her world after
falling in love.

Show the differences that love brings to the world by REFERENCING the past
when there was no love.

As an example, for the first part, when the girl touches the colorless or dried leaves
in her world it withers and turns to dust. When she’s holding the boy’s hand
and touches them again it turns bright green and flourishes. Put in a bunch of
these contrasting scenes into it and you should have a very beautiful story.

Let me know if this helps.

ThinkStory

#344

thanks, it’s great idea, i already have something more in my mind. However, I think that my bigest problem is making a script, all those ideas putting in one line. i have a million scenes in my head, but just like some mess.
As I said my firs idea is she, walking on the street. When she saw that cute ball she wanted to see where it came from. She found different, happy world with a boy and made her and her worl more happy. The thing that I need is something to give action, some turns… something that wont make people to turn off after 10 seconds.

thanks again :slight_smile:

#345

Hi boobetty,

hmm…I’m not sure I understand the question.

You want to put more action into it and you have too many scenes
that you want to juggle but are not sure about how it flows?
Uh, is that it?

From our description, it all seems pretty logical. The flow seems okay
whether you use a ball, rabbit, or some other magical object. If you have
too many scenes take your favorite ones, write them down and put them
on a timeline based on the current structure of the story:
Her world --> ball --> Color world --> Her world again.

If you want, maybe you can provide some examples of the scenes that
feels messy to you and we can work on organizing them into the story.

ThinkStory

#346

Hi thinkstory,
we really appreciate you’re still here helping people!
So, we have this idea for our graduation short film, but we’re not really sure of what direction it should take, and if it can turn into something interesting. It’s about crop circles. We were thinking of making this story about an alternative solution to this “mystery”. All should happen during the night, with everything illuminated by the moon. At the moment we have two solutions.

The first one, on which we think we can already work, is something magical with some little beings (obviously not aliens) with a nice design working together with ropes, little wood sticks and other natural thing to build something like a Rube Goldberg machine that does all the job only once it is completed, so you don’t know what are they doing until you see everything done from a top view, maybe this could be the last scene and it could be the morning after. We think that this way there’s no need for explaining why they do that if we focus on how they work and keep it interesting, what you think? If we need to explain why, how can we do?

The other idea is to have something like animals you could find in that habitat doing the same things, or maybe the crop circle came out but just as a consequence for something else they were doing. But this way it can’t be focused on a magical thing and maybe we should explain why are they doing this, also we have no idea of which animals we could use, mouses? insects?

The problem is that we’d love to make the magical one, but there is a lot of difference between giving a magical solution that in the end it’s not different from saying “aliens are doing all this things” and giving a solution like “hey, there was no mystery, it’s just some animals having fun”. Do you think we should work on the first one making it visually interesting or we should work on the second one, developing a “real” solution (well, more than aliens or fairies) something that kids the ones who think theres some secret behind all that?

I hope everything is crystal clear, I think I made some confusion and i’m not fluent in english!

Thank you in advance, Gab

#347

Hi Gab!

Your first idea is perfectly fine, as long as you present it in an interesting fun way
then that should be good enough.

No need to prove the “no so mysterious” idea since the discovery of the 2 guys in
England who revealed that they’ve been forming crops circles in secret for more
than a decade with simple planks and ropes. But if you’re still pondering about
that angle, then perhaps you can use ground hogs. It’s an exaggeration, so mix
a bit of humor and imagination into it. Like two ground hogs are forming
nesting tunnels in competition for a lady love. The designs look pretty and interesting
on the surface but beneath them are actually lavish underground dwellings used to
attract a mate. Or something silly like that.

ThinkStory

#348

hi there,
recently i have bought a sony hc-45 camera for personal purposes.then an idea occured to me tht i could use it for a short film which i have been toying for the past 3 years.its like two warriors coming from an another dimensional world,to earth to complete their battle.i know its not orginal and its very ambitious ,as i want to mix both live footage and 3d characters…i want it to have a mix of manga and sin city look.the problem is i want to do in a different way,not the usual fighting and explosions.i hope u can help me in the development of a good plot,something interesting and visually attractive…thanx man

regards

vivek

#349

Hi vivek!

Um, I just want to make sure I understand the question first.
Are you having trouble with:
A. Non-creative restraints like budget, time, resources and therefore need
a story idea for something that can accommodate those restraints?
OR
B. Creative restraints like coming up with an interesting scifi/manga styled
story in general?

I have some thoughts on both but not sure which one is troubling you.

ThinkStory

#350

hi man,

           i think its the first one...i have been searching for references for the past two months and its like i have been losing tht " creative interest' in this project...so before tht happens, i want some desperate help....i have a mix of ideas like for eg using the indian mythology like ramayana or mahabharatha (hope, u have heard of them)...its like a starting trouble...if i get a push,maybe i can go ahead with it...waiting for ur reply..cheers

vivek

#351

Hi vivek,

uh…that sounds more like option 2, but anyway, if the problem is you’re looking
for some inspirational boost, try going back to the basics.

Define or redefine your story world a little bit:
What world do you want the story set? Place? Time?
Who do you want your main character to be?
What is the major conflict your character faces?
What is the turning point, what moves the story forward?

Here’s an example of the thought process:
(Note that this is just an example, there are millions of combinations
to play around with.)

What world do you want the story set? Place? Time?
The two stories you mentioned are major Sanskrit epics from India, is that correct?
So your characters can be from some ancient world that get transported to a
new world like you mentioned in your initial post.

Who do you want your main character to be?
You want warriors–>so you’ll have 2 main characters that can be
Path A. 2 males (action)
Path B. 1 male 1 female (romance)
Path C. 2 females (something new/retro; female time travelers from the past)

What is the major conflict your character faces?
You want your characters to be in a battle–> so if you took:
Path A. 2 warriors/brothers/kings fighting for wealth/power/justice/jealous love, etc.
Path B. 2 enemies fated to fall in love; 2 lovers fated to become enemies
Path C. 2 sisters/friends/enemies fighting for wealth/power/justice/jealous love, etc.

What is the turning point, what moves the story forward?
The “change” here in your story will be from old world to new world.
So here are some examples for a “turning point”:
Path A. So let’s say you want 1 guy to be a King and another to be a Peasant.
-King in old world = Wealth+Power
-Peasant in old world = Poor+Powerless
-A CHANGE in their world = Change in Power Dynamic
-King no longer has power in new world
-Peasant may no longer be powerless in new world
-There, they can fight to gain power in new world.
-This is more moral/theme based, more epic-like.

Path B. If you chose the lovers-to-enemy route
-Male lead in old world may play a very dominating role in his society
-Female lead in old world may play a very submissive role in her society
-A CHANGE in their world = Change in Relationship Dynamic
-Male lead may still think in his old world ways
-Female lead may fight for equality
-This is more character based, can be more comedic/entertainment oriented.

Path C. Let’s mix it up a bit here so you can see all the various combinations you
can use.
-1 character is from the old world and the other is from a future world
-The two are both Queens in their land and they meet in a middle world.
-One is equipped with magic, the other is equipped with technology.
-This is more concept based, so it’s more abstract and visual oriented.

Again, these are just some stuff to give you ideas, they’re also structures that can
be used to build your story. Pretty cliche but let me know if this helps.

ThinkStory

#352

thanx a lot man!!! wow, u r a genius…i have already started a simple script abt one week back…i will be doing a small storyboard like thing and sometimes if possible also a animatic version…i wish to show u these things, and hope u have time to gimme more suggestions…thanx again man…cheers:)

vivek:thumbsup:

#353

Okay, cool! Glad I could help.

Excited to see your script/storyboard/samples etc.
When a story takes form…I love that stuff!

ThinkStory

#354

hello thinkstory

i have been trying to develop a idea i have had for quite some time. i need help with some

#355

hi
i have a problem with story developing “creatively” for my college project n i wana present all that story in 3d , the topics in which i am interested are “Child labour” or" double standards" in society , can b any of them , that story could b start from normal but the message convey in the end that forced the people to think that this shouldnt b in society, if u have any idea plz share with me

#356

Hi iffi,

uh, what kind of creativity problem are you having,
do you mean just developing ideas?

Do you have any time constraints or other preferences,
such as setting/characters/genre etc.?

Can you give some me some details?

ThinkStory

#357

Hi thinkstory! I would like to thank you very much for what you`re doing, you don´t know how important it has been to have you around.

I´m almost finishing my studies and would like to get a 1 min. short before my thesis, however, ive just dont know really how to wrap things together and would like to know quickly if you could help me

first,
I have a running creature (only modeled now) who has been forced to wear a muzzle because of his age and the lack of food on the place, and therefore has fleed his city (probably to a desert, yet still don´t know) to find some way to take it off

and there´s his antagonist, who´s chasing him cuz he wants to be sure that he dies because his (the antagonist) brother died the same way, and it getting away would be a dishonour to its memory.

The short then would probably would be the chase of both to just model/animate/rig the two of them and the background since i don´t have any partner on it.

What do you think?
Do you think it´s worth something or should i start all over again?

Thanks again

(p.d. really sorry for putting u some more work)

#358

Hi chrchaves,

hard to say…it seems like you currently have pieces of a story but
not the whole picture yet so let’s try to round it out a bit more before
deciding whether or not to use it.

Do you know how the story ends or if there’s a theme or meaning behind it?
Is the whole story basically about the chase?
Is this going to be a light or serious piece?

In making these decisions for a school project, I would say go with your strengths
and stuff that interests you. It will help you come up with new ideas and make
the production process more enjoyable.

ThinkStory

#359

Thanks!!! Got to think that for a while:thumbsup: If I come to a decision, can I post again?

#360

Of course! Post anytime you think of something.