Pros – Lots of potential for story, animation, environment
Fun message, can be short, emotion, acting
Irony is freaking hilarious in this story
Potential for change of emotion (animation)
No dialogue (sweet)
Strongest character, someone you could root for
Cons – Why animation? Could be done in SNL or something.
Lots of animation, but not enough stuff for shaders/lighters, lacking certain elements that would appeal to everyone’s interests
Cliché, we’ve all seen mimes
Crowd control: people going to be too repetitive?
14 comments:
Pros: Funny, Ironic, short-yet scalable, Finishable, could help wipe the slate clean for nxt year.
Cons: Morbid (if he dies, yet i still like morbid, blah blah blah)
Besides me being not so much of a fan of mimes, I really think this one is still more of a single-person project. It would be great fun for the animators, but I just see a lot of other people getting stuck with not that much to do.
I loved the idea as a one-liner, but I worry that if we try to expand it enough to accommodate everyone we'll lose the snappy brevity that makes the idea funny in the first place.
In case anyone didn't get Chris Welch's expansion on the mime idea it is:
The mime is really really bad at what he does. No one pays attention to him, and when they do they only boo him. One day as he's walking home he gets trapped in a glass box on a street corner. As he bangs the glass and yells for help (no one can hear him) people walking by notice him and stop to watch, thinking that this was one of his routines and that he is giving the best performance of his life. They begin to clap and cheer.
From there one of his ideas was that someone who is walking along not looking runs into the glass box and gives the mime away.
Lots of people out there have a mortal fear of mimes/clowns (myself included). It might be harder for people to relate to something they are terrified of.
I do love the character moments it presents, though. Fantastic facial rigging/animation is a must have.
I would like to find a really creative solution to why there is a glass box on the street corner. I'm actually ok with the randomness of it, but I think we could think up something cleverer.
Also, I like the idea of simplifying it from a crowd watching him to maybe him interacting with one or two other characters...maybe children?
I also like the idea of changing it so that he is PURPOSELY in a glass box to kind of "cheat" the system, right? Because he know's he's no good. Then the people end up moving away from where he is and he has to follow them--without breaking his box. So here he is trying to carefully tip it over and roll it down the street avoiding obstacles, etc, so that he can get to the center of attention. It's just an idea.
CON: It just occurred to me that this is kind of like one man band--meaning it's a performer in front of an audience.
When shooting a mime, is it not appropriate to use a silencer?
You know, those everyday occasions.
these are the kinds of questions we must ask ourselves, people. the moral ones. do what is right.
It would be easy to get the glass case over him, have a factory truck drive by and have it fly out the back, un-bunjied ala Ninja Turtles, have it fall from an upper floor of the building above, or dropped from a crane, helicopter, whatever.
I think we should make the mime as talkative and funny as possible, like with the Iago from Alladdin guy's voice, screaming stuff in his Jersey accent, saying, "for the love of all dat is holy!!! get me outta here! Dis aint no act!! I'm trapped, people! Crimony!" etc etc as he pounds at the glass, then outside its totally silent, and the little chubby girl with the lollypop just licks away, mildly amused at his silent show. blah blah. it could be funny.
I also think that no one will feel bad for the mime, because theyre so weird!
Ha ha! love your comments Morgan! I also like Mikes idea of taking out a crowd and having him just perform for a few kids or something.
And I really feel this wouldn't be a single person project. I mean think of Pixar shorts with only one or two characters! I'm sure that more than only a few people worked on Lifted or Geri's game! Did they have a whole team of like 20 or 30?
I definitely agree that this can be expanded to a full blown group project without losing its charm. As far as a crowd goes: model one generic character with one rig, use the same mesh to sculpt 4-6 variants of that character(male and female), then use the variants as blendshapes on the original mesh. You can dial the different variant blendshapes in in varying degrees, and combine them to get an almost unlimited number of different characters all on the same rig. The mesh only has to be UVed once. Then it's just a matter of varying the textures. The motion of the crowd could be extremely limited. Or if you want to do a crowd, you can set up the camera to just show a bunch of feet or something. The point is that we can figure out simple ways to accomplish whatever we want (not that we shouldn't take into account what our available resources are as far as manpower and time go; I just don't think we should make any judgments based on technical issues at this point. At least, not as much as we are doing). I think that this story can provide plenty of work in areas besides just animation, but it also doesn't need to get out of hand.
I still think that this should be live action and not animated.
I agree this can be done live action, but so can just about any of them with digital enhancement. Animation does have special strengths, but i think it would be unwise to throw out a story just because it could be done another way, animation adds it's own slant and charm
Just a few htoughts before I go to bed. Jeremy and I brainstormed some ideas, although nothing is concrete. These ideas included a miming killer whale companion (he's already black and white striped, you know) as well as a sea-aquarium theme for the mime story (since at the Atlanta aquarium I saw large, thick pieces of acrylic that totally are transparent, but pretty much indestructible.)
That's it for ideas. See you tomorrow at the vote!
I personally think the mime idea is a bit cliché, but out of the four I pithed to my wife, she liked this one the most, even when I tried to tell her that a mime story isn't that original, she still liked it.
Anyway, that's my two cents. Or hers, at least.
Agreed mimes are cliche- More than that, has anyone ever seen a mime in real life, or only on TV, and only then, when they are being made fun of?
BUT- it could be lots of fun in many ways stated, and it could be changed, too-
Maybe he is an ex-lumberjack who finally quit his logging career to follow his dream and become a professional mime in downtown LA.
Maybe he gets in a fight with a goth who has the same face makeup.
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