Hatrack River Forum: Anyone good with gags? (no, not like that!)

This is topic Anyone good with gags? (no, not like that!) in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Ayelar (Member # 183) on :

So I'm in an animation class this semester, and we're working on a 3 minute mostly physical comedy about an elephant trying to lose weight. We have a VERY rough "layout" done. A layout is sort of like a storyboard, it's just a rough sense of what the timing will be. Nothing is lit, textured, rendered, or animated. Rough. [Smile]

That said, we're about ready to start animating, and we're working on filling the shots with visual "gags", like the elephant flying off the treadmill, or getting slammed around, or bumping aerobics classmates, etc.

I'm totally stuck on how to open the movie, though. The elephant is eating potato chips out of a trophy he won when he was young and buff, but that isn't really funny/poignant enough by itself. There has to be a better/more amusing way to introduce him.... Maybe he could suck the chips into his trunk and fire them into his mouth or something? Any ideas?

http://www.thebogs.com/layout.html

(download is 6mb, and you'll have to stare at the blue quicktime logo until it's done downloading... shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. there's no sound. and it's rough! [Big Grin]

)

Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :

How about he's looking in the trophy and due to the shape of the surface, he looks thin in the reflection but as you pan back you see that in reality he's tubby. Probably a pain to animate, though.

Posted by Ayelar (Member # 183) on :

Hmmm.... that could work.... but we'd totally have to change the positioning of everything in the scene to get him angled right.... I'll ponder over it.... [Smile]

Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :

Remember the opening of Star Wars. It starts with the front wedge of a ship, and grows as the cameral pulls back. You begin to get a sence of the size of that ship, when a larger wedge appears, and you beging to understand the size of the imperial destroyer.

Something similar, starting with a closeup of the buff elephant on the trophy, panning out to the ever increasing girth of fat elephant.

Or you can have him pick up a chip with his trunk and shoot it up into the air, catching it with his mouth. Do this twice, with perhaps some richochets on the second one. On the third, the chip bounces off the ceiling a litte out of reach, Mr. Elephant sees this and struggles to throw himself below the chip, but is so heavy, he falls short. As he lands the room shakes.