Story Solutions.

#141

Hi Aserash,

that’s pretty good for a fight scene.

But instead of using the humor as an excuse for the scene,
how about incorporating the humor into the action as well?
It’ll make the animated short more comlete.

As an example, how about have the ogre start off loosing the
fight then the knight swings his sword and brakes his enemy’s
ugly nails?
The ogre gets really angry and turns around to win the battle.

It’ll give the story a beginning, climax, and conclusion rather
than just a scene.

ThinkStory

#142

Hey Aserash,

I’m not sure if it’s OK to voice my opinion in here with another take on your story since this is Thinkstory’s thread :slight_smile:

It seems like your story already benefits from a natural comedic element. The situational dichotomy presented when you display the ogre preparing for anything BUT a battle to the death is humor in itself.

Adding more humor has the potential to either make or break the story, so to speak. Thinkstory’s idea about the knight inflicting damage to the ogre’s nails is a good start. Consider anything the knight can cause damage to with regards to the ogre’s pride (illustrated before the battle, for example, doing his nails). This would naturally cause the ogre to strike back fiercely. As we all know, in a battle to the death, the last thing you worry about are your nails/hair/sculpting hands/tattoo, what have you.

This raises another character trait. In any battle to the death, a fighter who worries less about his own life and more about the things that make him beautiful or unique usually demonstrate a strong sense of confident fighting ability in the character. Like he’s done this hundreds of times before. Demonstrated further by the fact that his preparations for a battle to the death are relatively bizarre yet undisturbed. You need to now ask the question, should the Knight give the ogre any trouble, or should it be a fairly simple battle? Either route can be effective.

Of course, when he returns, he’s no more undisturbed than he was before the fight.

In reality, you have a wealth of options, but I think you’re on the right track.

Anyway…I apologize to Thinkstory. I know this is his thread :slight_smile: Just wanted to express my opinion.

Best of luck!

Joe Burnham

#143

hey ThinkStory,

First off … youre lucky to be so confident in thinking of story ideas… developing the story to the full really is the thorn in my side. I love the visual side of creating shorts, but i always need a bit of help with the stories…

heres one for you. Im working on a piece that expolores the use of frame, and basically describes a person on a journey from A to B and back to A ( in about 3 minutes )

i know this is kinda vague, but does anything spring to mind when you think of an idea for an intersting journey ( i mean the point of the journey, its purpose, the relevance of part ‘B’ ) think about passing through as a base, or the transition through different spaces. Be as abstract or simple as you like.

constraints: the elements must be real-world and possible to film with a camera, and only involve the single protagonist.

anyway… just thought i might ask you and see what you say…

( of course credit will be given where credit is due :wink: )

#144

Hello ThinkStory.

The purpose of using the rabbitman was a choise of making him more different. Eaven though there are other animalmen in this world, most of them live in the countryside and not in a big city. This will be told in the movie by using a countryside accent for Lukas and making him stand out against the city lanscape, beeing akward in traffic and so on…

I have tried to communicate this through the fathers unwillingness of telling his legacy to Lukas. The dad ofcourse know that Lukas has the potential of becoming a superhero, but wants to leave him out of this world and let him be only the normal man he is. But you are right, this whole part of the script is weak, but I belive if I also mix in the prejudice against animal men, I might make this work?

As for making him want to be a mecha pilot, I’m afraid I get a bit to close to a genre that I have no way of knowing the rules for. I have only watched evengelion and some random episodes of other mecha series.

Once again, thank you for taking time.

/Lillmagnus

#145

Hi ThinkStory and Joe Burnham

Thank you very much for your comments. It has gotten me thinking in the right direction. For the first time in weeks I feel like this story is going somewhere again.

#146

HI THINKSTORY

First of all i want ot thank you for this wonderfull thread.
OK, i have a story in my mind but my english is no so good and i dont know if i will be able to explain in a i have it in my mind, anyways here it goes.

The scene starts in an office there is a guy sitting in his desk surrounded by lots of documents holding his head trying rest a bit and figure out how will finish all that workwhen all of the sudden door opens and a woman stiks her head in and says “BOSS IS ASKING FOR YOU”.

Next scene the guy is walking downl the main offices to the bosses office (a emegency button should be vissible as he walk by).

Bosses office.
Guy enters the office and sees the boss in his chair finishing a phone call angry. He puts down the phone orders the guy to sit down, guy sits. Boss then start to scream at him about some project that he didnt finish, guy just sits and dosnt say anything. Boss then opens a file cabinet and gives him a handfull of documents and orders him to finish those too. Guy takes the documents and walks out.

Main offices room (i didnt know how call it, room with lots of spparate offices).
As he gets out of the bosses office he goes by the emergency button and stops, he stops there for a while thinking and finaly he raises his hand and brakes the glas of the emergency button and pushes it. At the instant the hell brakes loose, people screaming, running (of course here you’ll hear onlu voices), red emergency light flashes, than you see bosses door open and you see boos running like crazy, terrified. And when all get out he goes at the main office door locks it and turns toward the cammera laughing (this is where music starts or lets say dominates).

Allover offices.
With a rythmic music going on guy starts to jump on the desks in dancing manner starts kicking the computers, displays, braking stuf, shreding papper, etc etc.Finaly he gets to the bosses office looks at the char and sits and starts to spin, puts his and behind his head and makes a happy face (cammera zooms at his face sllowly till it gets pretty close) he closes his eyes and relaxes when all of the sudden a heand comes in the shot and slapps him in the face (cammera zooms out fast) you see the guy sitting in the chair (not the bosses chair) in the bosses office with the boss still screaming a him about the project that he didnt finish.

Ok about the end i am not sure how to do. Maybe the boss reaches for the file cabinet and gives him the bunch of documents and tells him to finish those, and the goy goes out (cut to black) and you hear the emergency sirene goes loud and men screaming and crashing thins as the ending titles go.

Please send me reply

#147

Hi. thinkstory.I need your help. I’m working on 90sec 2d animation project and about to start main production. I know my story is not enough but I don’t have enough time to make the story perfect because I have a deadline in the school. I hope you can give me some advice for my story. Check this web link. http://myhome.naver.com/~s3614

#148

I know it’s holliday season but if somebody is reading this thread please give me some feadback, i really need to know what do you think of my story.

#149

Hi Besnik,

hmm…it seems to lack some spice.

It’s a stress breaker type of story but it needs a more
solid punch line. How about this:

The emergency button isn’t shown at the beginning before
he walks into the office.

The employee walks into the office from the right side of the
hall, gets yelled at, leaves the office and walks out to the left,
passes the alarm, doubles back and breaks it.

He imagines what you described and then snaps out of it just
as the boss was about to dismisses him from the room. He stares
at the boss with a wide smile. The boss stops yelling and looks at
him weird. He gets up to leave the room. The boss panics and
asks him what he’s smiling at.
He tells him, “Nothing.”
The boss replies, “Yeah, I didn’t think so!”
Still smiling, he exists the room, closing the door behind him.
And walks towards the left, passing the alarm.
The glass covering the alarm is held together with ducktape.

So, what do you think?

ThinkStory

#150

Hi Hyunju Cho,

I tried clicking on that link but had trouble reading the document,
can you verify that the link works OK? It could be just an error on
my part.

ThinkStory

#151

ThinkStory Thanks allot for the reply

Yes i agree with you i need to spice it up a bit. What i don get is (maybe is my bad english) why is the emergency button glass held together with duck tape.

#152

You can downroad my storyreel. Move the mouse cursor to 2nd pass or 3rd pass menu and rightclick then save target to your local drive. H.264 codec was used or you can contact directly with my e-mail: chohyunju405@msn.com. If you send the mail, I can send the storyreel file. Thanks for your time.

#153

Hi Besnik!

The glass is held together with ducktape because it’s been broken before.

ThinkStory

#154

Ohhh, Ok so when he smiles he remembers what he did before, and the ducktape… OK now i got it. Thanks allot ThinkStory. I think i might go with your version, is there anything else that i might add to improve my story?

#155

I don’t think he’s smiling about what he’s done before. It would have had to have been someone else who’s pulled that stunt. It’s still a fantasy for him. Besides that, he probably would have been fired after something like that.

Depending on the office, I don’t think they’d just fix the glass case for an emergency button with duct tape. If anything, they would have gotten a new glass case. Of course, the duct tape is more humorous.

Also, during the fantasy, when the employee is jumping around, kicking things and ripping papers, have you considered doing that in slow motion? Maybe sometimes taking close ups of the man’s face as he relishes in ripping company documents? What was your plan for that part?

  • Joe
#156

hi ThinkStory,
if you still have time and want to help me, I have a problem here with my story ending, especially the ending, I mean. any ideas would be greeeeaaaaatly welcomed :slight_smile:
my project:
http://mustec.bgsu.edu/~virgil/pseudo.html
thanks!

#157

Joe thanks for you feadback. Your probably right about him being fired after pulling up a stunt like that, you got a point there. What do you suggest?

And about the fantasy part when he brakes stuff, i though on going only with close ups of braking stuf ripping documents etc. that way i will gain on action and rythme and maybe in the end a wide shot of him standing in the middle of office whith papper still falling around just to show mass of destrucion the he caused than a close up of employees face he turns his face towards the bosses office and gets of the frame (this is where he goes to the bosses office).

And i thought on going with 1970 kind of office it gives more warmth and nostagic feeling to the story, what do you think about this?

Feadback are wellcome

#158

Besnik,

If you decide to go with the broken glass / duct tape idea, it would have had to be another employee who broke it. Think of the boss. He probably puts a lot of his other employees through hell. So much so, in fact, that someone previously might have decided to break the glass, hit the emergency button, and go crazy.

This means that your character is remembering someone else’s fantasy and would like to do the same thing because he probably remembers how happy and satisfied the other employee was after destroying the office. That said, you’ll probably need some way to show that another employee had done that before just so the audience doesn’t get confused about the duct tape.

The best time to demonstrate this is during the fantasy. Maybe, at the climax of his destruction, your character might scream, “Remember Bob!” or something to that extent. It’s a subtle hint, but it allows the viewer the freedom of understanding the situation. This “Bob” character is apparently looked up to by his former co-workers because he was the first to step over the line and speak out (by destroying everything). “Bob” would then be an icon of liberation for the employees. What do you think?

I like the idea of the office having a 1970’s feel. Keep things calm and comfortable. Makes for a great “destruction” segment :slight_smile:

  • Joe
#159

Hi Besnik,

to give more clarification to what I meant.

Of course the ducktape is not very realistic–not supposed to be
just like the fantasy part is not realistic either.

When I first read your story, what I thought is missing
is that it didn’t have a way of resolving that two mediums:
Real vs. Fantasy

Once he was in the fantasy, how do you bring him out?
Should you bring him out? How do you bring him back
and still make it funny and have meaning?

So the ducktape serves as a way to link these two mediums.
It only serves the purpose of giving the audience a, “Huh? So
did he do it or didn’t he?”

In terms of he’ll get fired if he did that…well, not if he didn’t
get caught! He could have pushed the button without anybody
seeing him. It doesn’t really matter, it’s a fantasy short about
the office workplace–a stress breaker.

I thought it was O.K. to be a little vague and that quality made
it more interesting. Just drawing out a “Hmm…” feeling from
the viewers without the explanations but that depends on the
style you want so your choice.

ThinkStory

#160

Hey ThinkStory!
Thanks for replying to my post. I went to check out Full Metal Panic! like you said and WoW! So surprised, fantastic recomendation!!!
I finished the first series and can’t wait to get the last two disks of the second set online. What’s the secret to making stories like that??!
The second series is Sooooooooooo funny! The original was awesome too, loved it, especially the chemistry between the two main lead characters!
Nobody interested in hearing your analysis? I’ll be lineing up the hear it!Great anime!
Thanks again!!