USB Story Idea/Concept - (5 Mins nonstop writing)

Man wakes up he’s used the Cloud/Usb system for years, its part of his life/daily routine. Wake up, plug in and access the overnight deliveries of his chosen packages/subscriptions with top ups and updates available throughout the day.

Shower, coffee, plug in, work, home, backup and repeat 7 days a week.

Life became simpler with no need to worry about forgetting important dates or meetings. Even knowing to take an umbrella with you with the most upto date weather information made things seem that much easier.

Special events, memories, notes, facts and figures were now impossible to forget when it was possible to back everything up and store away to ‘remeber’ at a later date.

Sharing thoughts and ideas that could be hard to articulate was a thing of the past, with the invention of Memory Share (somekinda server/cloud) you could record/stream your thoughts to make them viewable to others.

With everything to easily stored what could go wrong?

Ground Rules

Need to set myself some ground rules/boundaries to get any further... Its turning into quite a big series of ideas and throwing up a lot of questions as i write but i think i need to reign it it a little and explain some of the things and how i see them like just how this would work:

(Im also *really* hoping these scans are legible... I will type them up later but for now i just want to write it all out)

Non Stop Writing

Trying to pull some of the ideas i've had together in an attempt to form somekinda story, as has been pointed out ive got a tendency to write things off by thinking about technical limitations rather than actually seeing where the story could go THEN working out how i'd show it.... So i decided to give the whole write non stop for 5 mins, the first thing that comes into your head whatever that is/no matter how stupid/unworkable it is. doesnt have to make sense its just a case of getting it down and working back thro it later and letting the idea form. So after listening to what people were telling me this is what i came up with in all its unedited glory, if anything ive learnt im not that great at spelling :-/

Ideas so far

All Change... Again

True to form ive dropped my idea and started over, although this time its deffo for the best... its just taken many many tellings for me to realise this. Space was always gonna be a risky setting no matter how much i wanted to make it there.

Anyways the new plan is sort of based on ideas from a documentary with Michio Kaku
and how it might be possible to back up memories etc with small computer chips in the brain...

V4

The latest set of storyboards ive worked on, probably the set my happiest with thus far although they still need some work, had some good suggestions on where i can tweak things and how some places dont read so well but seeing as there the most complete they've been so far here they are,

Bad Hair Day

Does an astronaut need a helmet if he is in the ship all the time? Probably not. However im not sure about hair just yet. Im thinking he might wear a hat, almost to avoid a dodgy hair do and any issues that could crop up in the rendering... That and i like hats. Hair is one of the many things I dont really know about, interested to see if i could get it working and looking good tho. But first i gotta decide on a style, and not picking something that would give the wrong impression of the character.

Faces!

Getting a little stuck and frustrated with the story so went back to drawing, i never got round to giving my character a face so I started scribbling to see if anything came out... there not my best and faces arent my favourite thing to draw...

Take 2

So after not really being able to explain the film idea sucessfully changes were made. Maybe he doesnt get back or how the computer breaks/ make that more entertaining and more of a series of unfortunate events culminating in him landing back on earth but breaking the door and not being able to get out. A sort of bitter sweet ending... More drawings followed but nothing that concrete or in order just to make explaining things harder :s

 After explaining the idea thus far to a great friend Matt decided to throw ideas at me and see what i made of them, some of them could work really nice like a failed warp speed drive type thing with a really flappy facial reaction to animate or rather than sticking the broken circuit in a toaster have it be dried out with a hairdryer etc... Essentially make it stupid and funny but plausible

Intial Storyboard

Well this was the first attempt at trying to work out what i was making... didnt go as well as intended and left a lot of un answered questions. After talking to Lin (writer on Milo) she helped me realise that there was no motivation for the character so I decided it was him travelling home after a long space mission, however at the last hurdle his ship breaks down and he has to repair it before he misses the window for re entry...

Writers Block

Writers Block sucks. Unbelieveably so. I was hoping to spend  a month off between the end of my internship and starting as a contractor cracking on with my film but ive drawn a complete blank, tried a few writing exercises but nothings seeming to take shape. Just much thinking and drawing of astronauts. Think im getting lost in the details... But at least my guy has a variety of suits and hats

Space Film

So as ever ive done much thinking and after looking through my sketchbooks and having a chat with some of the lovely people at Lionhead I've decided to make a space film using an astronaut which seems to crop up fairly often and is scribbled over various bits of paper all over my desk.

Grad Film Ideas 2

After talking through the Game Character Idea with various people it seems as though its getting too big for three mins, an overly complex idea with no real story behind it other than I drunkenly wandered where they go and imagined them sat in a waiting room to be recalled. I still quite like the idea but given the time constraints i think its best to move on and play with other things. 


One positive thing to take from this idea was the fact that im set on making this a CG Film and will hopefully be able to take advantage of making this whilst working at Lionhead and having people willing to give advice and help out along the way. Which is awesome. 


So baring in mind i want it to be CG there are some definate constraints i have to impose on my self, Simplicity being massively important, ive only made one film in maya before and that was with a group of people. This time its going solo and trying a lot of things ive never done before so to help keep it simple and manageable i'd like to have one well animated/modelled/textured character, environment/location rather than take too much on and not be able to complete to a standard know I can achieve

Grad Film Ideas

So i got a contract extension at Lionhead, awesome. Thing is theres still a degree to be completed and after much thinking ive decided to do both full time, so I guess the really hard work starts now. Have been playing around with the idea of where a video game character goes when it dies....

- The idea was to have the character die at the beginning and wake up "inside" the game and have to find a way back to complete his mission/level/whatever he was trying to do


- Maybe see how a character/person would react to waking up in a room full of clones etc