I think it would help if I had an idea of what theme my story will be, and also what influences from games/films/artwork I could use to help.
My first thought was that the combination I was given (Grave Digger, See Saw, Cellar) might lead to quite a dark story, or with dark visuals at least. though the see saw initially makes me think of children's playground, and something goofy. So I thought about a game franchise called Medievil, which has dark visuals and ideas, though it includes a talking skeleton as a main character, and zombies wearing pink shorts, etc. so it also has a lot of humor and is able to appeal to children and adults.
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| A level with trampolines: possibly could help me find a way to incorporate a see saw into a spooky world |
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| Medievil screenshot (1998) |
Another thought was, when researching 'grave digger', a monster truck called the 'Grave Digger' was always popping up so I decided to look into it. I've thought about the possibility of making the main character a sort of monster truck inspired robo-man/woman. if I went (or could) go for this idea, I think i'd want to make the story a bit more upbeat/action oriented, maybe set in an american desert - with a Disney Cars inspired feel.
So far I have two themes to go on which have nothing to do with each other so I think i'll work on wether i want to go ahead with an actual character who is a grave digger, or make it a robot character inspired by the grave digger monster truck.
(If the character was a car-robot character he could use the see saw as an obstacle he needs to cross. As for the first idea, i'm not sure how to incorporate it into the story. However I wouldn't know how a cellar would work with this idea.)
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| Disney's Cars (2006) |
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| 'Colour Television' by Troy Paiva |
Hi Vikki,
ReplyDeleteOkay, I've just been bouncing your 3 components around in my brain, and I'm just sharing here some of the connections I've made - useful or not!
It did occur to me that perhaps the notion of the playground (in which the seesaw resides) could be pushed around a bit; for example, in the aftermath of WW2, children used the bombsites in London as 'playgrounds'... I was wondering too, if you had a lot of children buried in a graveyard, how would all those ghost children play in that environment? Perhaps for them, the graveyard would be a lot like an adventure playground. Perhaps your gravedigger is a grumpy character, who is always being punked by the ghost kids? I was thinking about the 3 ginger boys in Brave in terms of the way they might persecute the gravedigger (the way they persecuted the maid with the cakes in the film?).
It does seem as if there's a natural combo between 'digging' and 'cellars' - after all, a cellar is simply a store room under the ground; perhaps the cellar is your gravedigger's residence - perhaps he lives below the Mausoleum? What would a gravedigger keep in his cellar, I wonder? Maybe, this is a story when the gravedigger keeps chasing away the ghost kids, but ultimately builds them a see-saw on which they can play happily?
It did occur to me too that in digging a grave, your grave digger could dig his way into a cellar by accident - and that there's something down there; maybe it's a wine cellar, and maybe the grave digger gets so drunk he has an experience not dissimilar to this famous sequence from Dumbo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=944cPciN-kw
I can absolutely see how a see-saw/playground surrealism could creep in and how you could have a great time creating a dream sequence; there's another celebrated cartoon that has this structure; MGM's Bottles, which I always loved as a child:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVWD_DYzBSk
You could embrace a kind of classic cartoon-inspired stream-of-consciousness 'Happy Harmonies' approach. Take a look at this animated short too for inspiration for how 'wild' things could get for your gravedigger...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_hgktpIu4Q