I decided that I could kill two birds with one stone. I was thinking I might have something with this ninja fairy. A fairy that didn’t really use magic but used martial art skills to survive sounded like, an interesting idea that was worth doing some investigating into. So I decided to incorporate my schoolwork with the research I was doing. That way I was getting my class work done, and looking into making this fairy more then just a typical fairy. I know with the following semester I would begin my senior film project, and a lot of people where already starting to think up ideas of what they where going to do for it. I figured that my fairy idea would be a good project to work on as a senior project, but I needed to see if I could get a story that was doable
I needed a story that would make the fairy look heroic. There are basically two ways to make a heroic scene. Stopping an environmental problem or dealing with a villain. In an environmental problem, the hero must deal with their surrounding that is causing the problem, and that can be anything. The second is a villain and that is self-explanatory, like for example (someone comes along and starts causing problems and the hero must stop them), something like that. In every heroic tale the hero must save something or someone or both, or just go on some sort of quest, you are always going to find something like that.
The decision that I would have to make would decide the problems I would have to deal with down the line. Now, I don’t like going down the easy route, and most people like to have it easy. Frankly I’m not one of them, I’m one of those people that like taking on the more difficult tasks. I’m not someone that runs from a challenge, especially for what I had in mind for this project. All my skills would be put to the test and I wanted to live up to the challenge, and taking on difficult challenges in the arts is part of the job. With the art industry and especially in the animation business you need to take on the toughest of challenges.
The decisions I made was not as difficult as one would think, I went with a villain and I had the perfect villain in mind to go up against my fairy. This is something so despised that some men guard there front or back door picking the monsters off with there gun. This beast doesn’t care about your property or personal belongings. It is more then willing to mess up your yard and do what ever it wants to it. Both cats and dogs hate this creature and will kill it if they get the chance, because it aggravates them so much. The creature I speak of that would be the perfect villain is none other then a: SQUIRREL.
Ok at this point you are laughing uncontrollably so please calm down and let me explain.
I picked a squirrel for quite a few reasons. One of those reason was from my own personal experiences with them, and yes I’m not a big fan, and it borders on the line of sheer hate for the animal. The reason I dislike this animal is because I don’t appreciate having nuts thrown at me. Now if you live in an area and there are lots of trees, that have nuts or fruit and you are walking under them. You have to expect to get hit every now and then if you walk under those kinds of trees. But if you are in an area where the nearest nut tree is a good fifty yards away, and you are just minding your own business, and you feel something hit your head, and you see one of those little tree rats when you look up. Well then it’s a hole other ball game. If you try climbing the tree they run over to the next one over. In the end you end up getting stuck in a tree getting advice from some 10 year olds on how to get down. You can’t throw anything at them because they’re just too small and to fast. The only other option that is left to you is shooting them, and in some states that is illegal. But other then my own personal feeling, I have done some research into squirrels, and what I dug up just made the idea for a squirrel as a villain that much stronger.
Now when most people think of a squirrel especially if it is for a cartoon, they think cute little woodland creature that is perfectly harmless, in reality it isn’t. Now eating nuts and berries that is all true and most people know that. What isn’t as known is that if there is not enough food they will eat meat mostly insect or the left over’s from a bigger animals meal. They are also known to raid the nests of birds and destroy the eggs or even kill the baby birds. Some small animals like mice, will be bullied to leave their habitat or even be killed. Squirrels can cause a lot of property damage, everything from digging up seeds in your garden and braking into bird feeders, to braking into your own home and making a nest in the walls. All in all squirrels can be nasty little bustards and I’ve not even covered the diseases that they can carry.
I started doing drawings to make sure I got the squirrels body right. This was the next step to making the story work. The drawing below is an example of some of the research I was doing into making the squirrels shape just rite.
I started working on a comic strip to get the idea of the story down on paper. This was going to help me in taking that story to that next level. As seen in the comic the squirrel is attacking a small fairy child in a tree adjacent to the tree where the adult fairy is watching. This same fairy comes to the rescue of the smaller one removing her from danger and flying off.
This was a good start to the animation even thou it is only two pages long. In order to make this animation work I needed to build on this. This was a good start and there was a lot to build on. I’ll continue more on the progress of this film in my next post where I’ll go into what kind of media I was going to make this film in.
