Individual Pitch

During the holiday over the summer, we were given the task to create an individual pitch. The individual pitch should consist of a story idea that lasts around 2 mins and must also be accompanied by research, concept work, storyboards and moodboards.

So i started brainstorming a few ideas and narrowed it down to two stories. The two stories are as follow:

One is called Machine freedom. Its about a depressed house robot who is determined to leave his owners and realizes that he is meant for a bigger destiny. He finds out that there is a place called Machine City which would allow him to have the same rights as a human being. So he takes this opportunity and goes in search of this city.

The second story is called The Visitors. Its about an UFO spaceship that crash lands in a rural farm area. Out of the ship comes out 2 characters, one an alien named Zed and the other is a companion robot called 209. The whole story revolves around them trying to repair their damaged ship so they can get of this planet and at the same time avoiding human contact.

After a long hard think, i have decided to go ahead with The visitors pitch.

Here is the official plot synopsis:

An unidentified and unknown spacecraft crash-lands in a rural country farm. Upon landing, the spacecraft opens to reveal an extra terrestrial being named Zed and a companion robot named 209. After the visitors realize where they are, 209 confirms to Zed that they will not be able to get off this planet unless they find the missing fuel cell which broke off upon crashing. Zed goes off in search of the fuel cell while 209 guards the ship. Meanwhile a close resident of the farm woken up by the crash impact, coincidentally finds the fuel cell but is mystified as to what it is.

As Zed continues to explore the farm, he suddenly comes face to face with this human farmer. Zed spots the fuel cell in the human’s clutches and knows that in order for him to continue his original space mission, he must not leave any trace of his existence on this planet. He zaps the human in the forehead and wipes out his memory. With the fuel cell in hand, they re-attach it to the ship and finally take off. Zed acknowledges to 209 that this was a close encounter and that their mission could have been seriously compromised.

My target audience for this story will be the age of 12 and over. I feel as though the quirkyness of the characters as well as the humour will appeal to kids of that age range. I will also market this animation by creating a teaser trailer as well as a film poster to promote the animation on websites like Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo and Twitter.

Research and References

So i've been surfing the net for some specific images for a visual references. The idea of an alien and a robot has given me some thoughts about how i would approach the style and mood of this story. When i came up with this story initially, there was this game called Destroy All Humans on the Xbox which was released a while back, and i just loved the style of the game in terms of the design.

The design of the game was pretty colourful and vibrant as well as being toned. The artistic style i have in mind though for The Visitors is more simple, this is purely from a technical point of view.

I very much like the style of the dreamworks animation film Monsters vs Aliens. The design of the characters were pretty simple and colourful but what i had in mind was more or less simplicity but not too simple and flat. A more of a mixture between a simply stylized design with some detail.

Another influence for my story idea and the possible environment setting was a specific scene from the 1997 Men In Black film. Here is the scene from the movie below.

I found that scene to be really funny and simple too. So that sort gave me a template of how i wanted to create the scene for my story. In The Visitors, a spaceship crash lands and then these two characters come out of the ship and start bickering and arguing about what to do. So in terms of the mood, it will be tongue in cheek, funny and lively. It sets up a nice mood and atmosphere for me to use when i start developing the concepts.

I also researched and gathered reference on what the environments should look like and where it could possibly be placed. I think UFO stories generally tend to be associated with America a lot so i think basing my story in place like, say Kansas would be a perfect fit. A lot of alien films i have seen always seem to place the setting in a very country like area, quite subarban. Films that i have looked that have incorporated farm like settings are Signs by M. Night Shyamalan, the X-Files movies, ET and Close Encounters of The Third Kind.

Here are some image references of the typical american country farm.

Here are some early rough sketches of my characters of The Visitors below.