What is the story for Pilot Episode?

You know when you meet someone in life and you “click” instantly with that person. This is also applicable to things and situations, Sometimes you just “tune in” with something around you for no apparent reason.

I realized that early in life, probably as 7-8 year old and I was wandering ever since why things like that happen. Later in my teenage I connected this with astrology. I figured that there are people of some certain astrological signs that I’m more prone to accept without any experience. As adult I even contemplated that Quantum Mechanics has something to do with it, hehehe. : ) Anyways, I have no good answer to this day and this is what I want to explore in the Pilot Episode.
Here are the main characters below.



For now, I don’t want to tell you the details of the story but in brief it will introduce the viewers to the Dronecrusher world of Freelys and Rulebys. We will see how two Freelys got together and became very good friends. By all means there will be Rulebys (as bad guys) confronting main character which will actually lead to the moment where two main characters meet. There will be some action and humorous situations. The pilot will be about 10 minutes long.

At this point I’m working on the Pilot preview which means that render is just very crude, animation is blocking all important things for the story but it is not final. Both characters and environment/set will get lot more details. Animation will be refined.

Working on “Illuminated” project (mentioned earlier in my blog) I learned that you first have to have a solid preview before you spend way too much time (and money god forbid) working out just some shots perfectly on both animation and rendering side. What happened to “Illuminated” is that time and money ran out and there was no solid preview but only some beautiful scenes that don’t really work well together. Fortunately later, Phong (the art director for Illuminated) recycled all this footage together with some video editor and made an intro (you can see it at the beginning of my blog) for the animated series. I hope they’ll continue one day.

I on the other hand will take different approach. Considering that for now I’m a “One man Band” on this it seems that it is the only approach I can take, heh.

Well whatever, …… So, where am I at right now with this?

All main characters are designed, even for several episodes ahead. I have also a number of ambient, background characters. Environments and sets are pretty much built, at least what is needed for pilot, however I need to find some time to do some texturing and produce some new textures. Traffic in the city will get much busier as I have many vehicles designed but didn’t find time to bring them all in to the city for preview.
Animation is done for half the scenes in the Pilot and it will need very little time to get refined and finalized. So, ………. Basically I’m half done with the preview and going on faster since it is now all about animation and setting up scenes with sets, city traffic, characters and cameras. Here are two short animation sequences from the preview. First is with one of the main characters so called “Foothand” that just got to the city from the desert, she is wandering around and ...............



the other is with “Zen-B”, a robot who gets into trouble and eventually gets saved by Foothand, ……… the rest is “beginning of a beautiful friendship” as Bogart says in Casablanca drifting off into the rainy night.

Animation Style

Just as I noted in previous post I was influenced by La Linea cartoons. Below is the video from YouTube that I have done some 6 years ago while I was still working for Electronic Arts. I loved this animation but they considered it little to extreme in EA althoug it is really innocent. One guy freaking out and dropping on his ass loosing the balance, the other guy just does some hand gesticulation. What;s the big deal? Anyways , working on this animation I had La LInea cartoons in my mind and this is what I tried achieving in 3D. Check it out below



Here is another example of my animation this time it is a character from Dronecrusher that I'm working on. He is a Triped and has some trumpets attached as loudspeakers to him He will be very noisy and annoying. I'm sure my buddy Andrew will make some nice sounds for this guy. : )


Also here is a short motion test for Dronecrusher lead character Zen-B. He is a robot full of supprises and agility. Often he can act as Stan Laurel from "Laurel and Hardy" also one of my favorite shows

What is Dronecrusher show about?

Like the stories of most movies and shows the Dronecrusher story deals with “good guys” and “bad guys” but it also emphasizes the other kind of characters that I like to call “Drones”.
In real life that’s my least favorite kind. I’ll give you an example what I consider to be a “drone” in my experience.
You know a situation when you show up Monday morning at work and someone at the water tank or coffee station asks you: “How was your weekend?”, not really caring for an answer. If you take that question seriously and give them few more details than the usual: “Great!”, …… they’ll almost 100% give you back the good old: “Good for you” phrase, again not really meaning anything with this. They actually don’t give a shit about you.
So, ………. you see for me that is a good example of a “Drone” (you’ll see more about this in a show later on).
Besides “Drones” this show will define “Freelys” as one side of the coin and “Rulebys” as the other side. You can think about them as “good” and “bad”. Now, ……… what is good and what’s bad?
You must have seen the “Roadrunner” cartoon a bunch of times, so ….. who is a good and who is a bad guy there? Is a coyote a bad guy trying to get a roadrunner all the time or is the Roadrunner a bad guy since he always gets coyote hurt?
I guess this whole thing depends on perception and the side you are standing on.

One thing is sure it is always that one side views the other as wrong.

Drones, however don’t suffer this dilemma since they are not driven by passion like other two types of characters in Dronecrusher show.
So why is the show called “Dronecrusher”?
Using simple comic life situations this show will engage viewer to take sides as more and more “Drone” characters will turn to be either “Freelys” or “Rulebys”. The show is about waking up to essence of one’s self when making decisions is a natural call that determines us as characters of one or the other side.

The emphasis is going to be on burlesque scenes and situation like in Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton movies where almost no speech is needed. Everything in Dronecrusher will be explained by characters simply acting the scenes out speaking very little or none. There will be animation almost resembling pantomime where body language is very important.

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Look at the embedded video from YouTube. This is Italian cartoon "La Linea" that I watched as a teenage kid like crazy. Listen to Linea’s voice. It is a made up language loosely based on Italian language. Just the sounds and very simple animation does the trick. Line grabs you by the neck and gets you into its world. Same as Chaplin and Keaton. That is what I want to do with Dronecrusher

The image at the beginning of this text shows some “Freely” and “Ruleby” characters from the pilot show.

What is Dronecrusher?

After 10 years in game industry (Electronic Arts and Relic Entertainment) I developed a seriously bitter taste for game making in corporate environment. In 2005 I decided never again to work for another corporation but rather start something of my own. Oh my, ….. is something like that ever hard to do?Well, … I have the skill to make and animate just about anything in 3D but to sell it, …. That’s a different story.
So, in 2005 I started developing a game with a friend who is a programmer. About 2 years into making this game and actually having a pretty decent game engine and some art that could be looked at and enjoyed I realized that the game concept is going nowhere so we parted our ways. Considering that I owned the art (since I built the whole thing) I decided that I’ll ‘recycle’ it into something completely different one day.
Some time around summer 2008 it came to me after working as a contractor on the animation project called Illuminated that I should recycle my game art to make elements for a short animated movie or TV series.
Illuminated was interesting project but had very loose direction and no solid story. Eventually work that I’ve done found its place in a trailer for Illuminated animated TV series and project naturally died off for lack of funding. Here it is below on YouTube. I hope one day we’ll see a few episodes.



The production problems we had on Illuminated project led me to believe that I would be able to do a much better job leading a team of people to accomplish such a big task.One thing that I realized was that I HAVE TO HAVE a solid preview before I spend any time attempting to search for finished look and feel. I also knew that I have to have a solid concept before I can start thinking of bringing anybody on board my project.

So, ……. This is what I’m doing right now. I’m working on putting together a meaningful preview for a short move that will be intro to short animated series. In some ways this is a “pilot” for animated series aimed at TV and WEB viewers.

Here I go .....

I never though I’ll do the blog page. Even after 30 years of using computers I didn’t know what a Blog is. Actually I did know what blogs are but I’ve never visited any and had no idea why would anybody visit any blog. OK I got converted. : )

Anyways, if you are interested in animated film making pains and thrills you can start checking this blog. Here is a shot from the Preview (work in progress)