Firstly, sorry I haven’t posted in a while, instead of excuses however, this update provides my current ideas and work.
During my last tutorial with Alan, I presented my bank heist idea, which he told me to run with cautiously. He also gave me two animations to serve as some kind of inspiration. I now have two ideas.
Idea #1 resembles a "beat-em up" video game with a super hero type character stopping a bank heist, with a twist.
Idea #2 is a comedy short starring two incompetent robbers trying to rob a bank, told entirely through security cameras.
Idea #1
This was the idea I presented to Alan.
The story starts with a syndicate style gang robbing a large bank to acquire a gem being stored inside the vault. On a nearby buildings roof, a "superhero" is doing warm ups before launching himself through the bank window. He works his way through the gangsters and down to the lower levels of the bank, where he confronts the gang leader. After a fight, the "hero" wins, but instead of the day being saved he takes the gem from the vault himself and quickly makes his escape.
Presentation
My idea with this short is that it would look like a side-scrolling, beat-em up video game; taking inspiration from things like Mega Man, Street Fighter, or the animation that Alan sent me last time.
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| (Left: Mega Man X2, Middle: Street Fighter, Right: Darth Vader vs Die Hard) |
The short would play from this 2.5D perspective (3D models from a 2D perspective) following the hero as he ploughs his way through goons in comical fashion.
The next element to address is art style. I drew a few alternative blank figures as an idea of what I could do.
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Figure 1: Very simplistic. Stick limbs. Inspired by Cyanide and Happiness.
Figure 2: Cartoony. Almost chibi inspired. Fits in with classic 2.5D video games.
Figure 3: Realistic. Full character model, with most likely a lot of detail. Unlikely that this style would work with my current idea of slightly bombastic beat-em up. |
Out of these 3, I quite like figure 2. I personally think that it would work best for the video game style approach I want to take with this.
For dialogue, many video games have an image of the character and a dialogue box (and sometimes voice over) take up a portion of the screen; I was thinking of doing something similar, but instead of it being just a png with some text, I would fully animate to the character.
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| Quick example of how the dialogue would appear. The character would be a large more detailed version of the characters seen in the full shots. The characters name and dialogue would be displayed in the boxes below them. Doing this would allow for characterisation and character interactions with breaking the feel of it being a video game. |
Story
The story is what Alan told me needs work. I am honestly not sure what to amend with the story, so any constructive criticism is appreciated. So without changing the story just yet, I decided to try to flesh out the characters, the environment and the mcguffin.
The mcguffin is a large diamond gem. In context of the original story I came up with years ago that this short is taken from, the gem is an extremely powerful energy source which is valuable to both the gang leader and the hero in their various schemes; this can still be the case as long as I explain that properly in the dialogue. There is also the option to just have it be worth an absurd amount of money, and thus worth stealing.
Characters
The Hero
My original story's hero character is less of a classical obvious superhero and is a little more grounded in reality, as in he isn't comically overpowered, he can't fly and he relies on gadgets, like batman.
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| Gauntlet Thumbnails |
This characters name is Gauntlet, named after the two plasma gauntlets he has equipped. This design is obviously nowhere near final, I need to consider what to add to make a character like this appear more heroic. I need to decide between him having full head coverage or just face coverage. I'm leaning towards just face coverage, but this requires me to settle on a hair style. At the moment I'm thinking he would have gelled up, spiky hair as this would fit with the cocky attitude I would like him to have; Which is why I also drew a couple smirks on the right. Under the mouths, however is a face mask, which I decided that he shouldn't have as this seems more like villainous attire. I also need to settle on his goggle design. In his actual body shape, he's definitely quite muscular, with a lot of square design, to really drive home that this is some strong and heroic, making the twist that he is actually also a thief quite funny to me.
Other than being cocky, I imagine him to be the type of character to be making wise cracks while dealing with his enemies, similar to Spider-Man or Deadpool.
Of course if this character concept falls flat, I could always use a more traditional superhero design which may make the twist more impactful as it would truly be subverting expectations.
Gang Leader
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| Greaves Thumbnails |
The head of the gang robbing the bank, Greaves; name inspired by the words grief and grievous. My idea of him he that he is terrifying. He would be primarily very dark colours, has a nasty looking mask, wears a long trenchcoat and carries a grenade launcher for added fear factor. In the story he serves as the primary threat trying the get the gem, whether it be for power or financial gain. Although financial gain doesn't seem like the truest outcome given that, personality wise, the joker is one of my main inspirations.
Environment
The location of this short is an old, but very large bank. It would have about 3 floors, filled to the brim with various props and goons to be smashed around. The style of the building would have an art deco feel to it. When the hero and gang leader fight, the building will start to look more and more destroyed. The vault, however, would look quite modern and very pristine.
Idea #2
This idea came about after watching the second animation Alan suggested to me,
Blind Spot (I won't explain the full short here, I'd recommend watching it)
The CCTV element and the idea of a failed robbery sounds quite funny to me and reminded me of a scene in Snatch where two characters try to rob a betting shop, but fail miserably. I like the idea of telling a comedic story told entirely through CCTV.
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| Very quick sketch of the robbers |
The idea is that two bumbling idiots try to rob a small high street bank, the entire robbery fails, the cashier isn't threatened, the weapons aren't even real, they leave the bank with nothing but a half eaten sandwich.
Idea #2 is more of a backup idea if no one likes idea #1, but I can very easily flesh it out more if need be. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
