Inspiration for a Story
Now, we'll be talking about some preproduction,
which includes some inspiration, concepting and creating our storyboard.
First, let's talk about inspiration.
You can find inspiration from all over the web
and some of our favorites are Instagram, Vimeo,
Pinterest, Dribble, and Behance.
But coming up with beautiful images is one thing,
but telling a story is a whole another thing.
So, we like to look at relatable, down to earth stories.
We like to draw from our everyday life, experiences from childhood,
things we think that other people can relate to
and find common ground in.
No matter how boring and mundane you think it is,
someone out there can relate to something that you've gone through.
So, we like to play off of that in all the stories that we tell.
We'll think of something basic and simple from your everyday life
that a lot of people can relate to
and we're going to inject something surreal or magical into that,
to bring it up to the next level.
Some examples can be getting a jar open,
stubbing your toe, losing a board game.
Something from your childhood or home life can really spark an idea.
You remember this.
When Jill and I started dating, I stood up
and I stubbed my toe on a table that we were having some wine
and I knocked over a wine glass onto her laptop,
during finals week, and she lost everything.
So, that is a story that I often look at.
If someone else felt my pain and can relate to that,
that would make me feel a lot better.
So, maybe illustrating a story from your past,
of when you were embarrassed or felt silly
is a good place to draw inspiration from.
So, when I'm browsing for inspiration,
sometimes I'm just scrolling my Instagram feed,
and a lot of the artists I follow,
they tell some clever stories, but use a beautiful color palette.
So, the visuals are at first what grabbed my attention,
but what really reels me in is the story they're telling.
So, now we're going to start to concept for our story.
We'll start off with knowing
that we want around 20 to 30 seconds of animation.
We want to come up with a story that's relatable to a lot of people,
but then have a magical twist to it.
So, what we like to do is write down words
or any ideas that we have.
This is the messy part,
but this is where our story starts to form.
Typically, you have a subject and a situation.
So, you have a character of some sort
and he's doing, or she's doing something.
So, we'll write down...
some subjects.
We said that we want it to be magical,
so immediately, the word "wizard" comes to mind.
That's kind of the first word, so I'll write it down here.
We want to inject a magical being or something surreal
into a normal everyday situation.
That'll be funny and it'll add the magical twist we're looking for.
There could be some other ideas.
I think like, obviously, a unicorn,
that's a good subject for something magical.
-Witch. -A witch, definitely.
-I love witches. -Yeah, your witch is coming in.
-Oh, with all my gray hair! -Yeah.
How dare you?
-Trolls. -Yeah.
-A dragon. -Dragons are cool.
It could be really fun to illustrate these things.
So, we have something here with our protagonist,
our subject of our story.
So let's think about the situation that they're in.
And what we're thinking is something relatable.
Let's think of situations
that happen to a lot of people, no matter how boring it is,
so, don't throw anything off the table.
You said something about stubbing your toe, right?
From when we were dating.
So, let's say stubbed toe because everyone has stubbed their toe.
-Yeah. And it's the worst. -It is.
Maybe losing a board game? Yeah, and you're a terrible loser.
So, it's kind of fun to start thinking of these trolls,
losing a board game, dragon, if he lost a board game,
a fire would be everywhere.
She would cast a spell.
Starting to think of these cool pairings
is how we come up with our stories.
It'd be funny to see
one of these magical creatures unwinding at the end of the day.
What would a wizard drink at the end of the day?
Like, would it be Mountain Dew?
So we're matching mystical creatures with these everyday situation
because we feel that's where the humor is injected.
We're picturing a troll with giant hands trying to open a tiny jar,
something that we do every day,
but you don't usually see these mystical creatures
trying to do these basic tasks,
when they have some much fantastical ability.
Like, a wizard has so much magic and mythology behind him,
but he stubbed his toe and he gets really mad
just like the rest of us, and something goes wrong.
Or, picturing a unicorn having a bad hair day.
We just love the irony and the contrast
that you get from comparing these two situations.
So, having a glass of wine
is about unwinding at the end of the day.
Maybe we can branch off of that
and include putting on a face mask or ordering takeout.
Back to your story about us in college,
it included the stubbing toe and having a glass of wine.
So, I really liked that idea.
I think it would be funny to have some sort of magic
or some sort of spell out of anger when he stubs his toe,
The character, I'm thinking either wizard or witch.
So, I would either do this or this.
We'll continue to branch off of these things.
So dragon, he expels fire.
There's no science to this.
These are some visuals I'm thinking of that will happen in our story.
Maybe connect dragon to losing a board game,
because I can picture a dragon getting really petty
and like, maybe his opponent walks away
and he burns a couple checkers or something.
That's great. I liked your trolls and opening a jar.
I think that visual will be really funny to see.
So, there's a lot of great stories in just this board alone.
So, pocket some if you want, draw from this, if you want as well,
but I think what we're going to do
and Willie, tell me if you don't want to do this,
but I would love to do the wizard who is unwinding at the end of his day,
having a glass of wine, and then he stubs his toe
and does some sort of magical moment in anger.
So, he's trying to do something really big and crazy, at the end of it.
What could also make this funny is if,
when the wizard does something small like stub his toe,
and this big, magical moment can happen,
we can have a lot of color, it could be really fun animation,
and then when it's all over, something tiny happens.
He doesn't destroy the whole room, like, something small happens,
like the glass of wine just falls over.
Right, you're like expecting this huge thing to happen,
and then it's just like...
-It just spills or something. -Right.
We like to add some of these funny moments,
whether through comedic timing
or something lackluster at the end of our animation.
It's something we like to do to put a smile on people's faces.
Now that we have all of these concepts and ideas on paper,
in the next lesson, we can dive into our visual script.