An early character design the great Ken Morrissey
And some color/texture explorations by the talented Christopher Bancroft based on one of my doodles.
Official production blog for the animated film project Only a Dream
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Grandy
The Price character has evolved into Grandy, Lucy's grandfather. He's her guardian, and a wheelchair-bound windup toymaker.
Eli
Ok. The story is really starting to take shape!
Here's the school bully, Eli. He's turning into an important character.
Here's the school bully, Eli. He's turning into an important character.
Gargoyles
The screenplay evolves. Toying with all sorts of ideas, like introducing other nightmare creeps. Like gargoyles.
Environments reference
The last version of Lucy took place entirely inside a dream. It was a short. After learning more about the Hero's Journey, I decided to turn Lucy into a feature screenplay. Maybe I could make another short film out of bits and pieces form the feature, and sell it to investors that way.
After reading my first attempt at a feature screenplay (another awful story!), Claire Morrissey, friend and talented story artist from DreamWorks suggested maybe the story should be told in both worlds, waking and dreaming. This made perfect sense, so I started reinventing the story again, this time in tornado alley. It seemed like a nice balance, having warm colors in the waking world, cool in the dream.
After reading my first attempt at a feature screenplay (another awful story!), Claire Morrissey, friend and talented story artist from DreamWorks suggested maybe the story should be told in both worlds, waking and dreaming. This made perfect sense, so I started reinventing the story again, this time in tornado alley. It seemed like a nice balance, having warm colors in the waking world, cool in the dream.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Vehicles reference
Armed with some new knowledge about how to tell a story, I attacked the story from a new angle. One with some reinventions of the same characters. The nightmare monster is now a nightmare man. With a nightmare car?
Friday, April 4, 2008
Previz short film!
Welp. This is harder than I thought. I've made the whole story twice. I'm not going to show you the first version. It was Art House Death Metal at its weirdest. You would not enjoy it.
I realized I was being too literal with my message. Vicki Jensen watched it and said, "you're not going to change anyone's beliefs in a movie". Precisely my mistake. The first attempt was a big, bold, boring statement about religion and science.
In the lunch line at DreamWorks, Tim Johnson said now that I have the pieces, I should play with the ideas and how they fit together. Mix, match, rearrange, destroy, reinvent... Kill my babies as they say.
To understand what he meant, I dove into screenwriting. Robert McKee's "Story", Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey", and Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat".
It's fascinating. The traditional story arc touched upon by all these guys is derived from something woven deep into the human spirit itself, since we gathered around campfires as cavemen. It works. It's the heartbeat of everything everything from Star Wars to the Matrix to the Seven Samurai.
As a side note, I listened to RobertMcKee through the earbuds as I was falling asleep at night, a trick my mom taught as a kid. Let it seep into the unconscious. That's how I learned the multiplication tables. "9 times 9 is 81", she would repeat as I dozed listening to the tape recorder. I can still hear it like it was yesterday.
So this is my second previsualization attempt at Lucy.
This one has a whole new set of problems though, not the least of which is The Nightmare monster. It's too similar to Aliens. Also, the story is still too 'out there'. Another stepping stone, not worthy of production.
Lucy short film previz from ben rush on Vimeo.
copyright Ben Rush 2006
I realized I was being too literal with my message. Vicki Jensen watched it and said, "you're not going to change anyone's beliefs in a movie". Precisely my mistake. The first attempt was a big, bold, boring statement about religion and science.
In the lunch line at DreamWorks, Tim Johnson said now that I have the pieces, I should play with the ideas and how they fit together. Mix, match, rearrange, destroy, reinvent... Kill my babies as they say.
To understand what he meant, I dove into screenwriting. Robert McKee's "Story", Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey", and Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat".
It's fascinating. The traditional story arc touched upon by all these guys is derived from something woven deep into the human spirit itself, since we gathered around campfires as cavemen. It works. It's the heartbeat of everything everything from Star Wars to the Matrix to the Seven Samurai.
As a side note, I listened to RobertMcKee through the earbuds as I was falling asleep at night, a trick my mom taught as a kid. Let it seep into the unconscious. That's how I learned the multiplication tables. "9 times 9 is 81", she would repeat as I dozed listening to the tape recorder. I can still hear it like it was yesterday.
So this is my second previsualization attempt at Lucy.
This one has a whole new set of problems though, not the least of which is The Nightmare monster. It's too similar to Aliens. Also, the story is still too 'out there'. Another stepping stone, not worthy of production.
Lucy short film previz from ben rush on Vimeo.
copyright Ben Rush 2006
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