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Alright guys, time to buck up and get to work.
As I mentioned on the News page, there are things that anybody here on the source can do to help. I and some of the other creative folks here on the source will handle the Model Sheets for each character. That much will be plenty of work on its own. The rest of you who aren't artistically inclined have a huge amount of help you can all give.
The other component to a syndicated animated series is what's known as a Bible. There's nothing religious about it but let me describe to you one bible I actually got to see!
One of my teachers at the Art Institute actually managed to get a hold of the Character Bible belonging to Lucky the Leprechaun of Lucky Charms fame! The bible was dated to production at around 1995 or so, right when they changed his character design to reflect the new digital animation. Inside this book, there are lots of illustrations and a great deal of text. One picture that stuck out was the interior of Lucky the Leprechauns home. It had a bunch of shots inside that included every angle of his home lovingly rendered in high detail. Against these images, large blocks of text were planted that described what was there, where it came from and why any shot of Lucky's home had to include these objects in the background. So much of who Lucky is and how he came to live in that specific tree with those specific items had evolved and carried on from his original creation back in the 60's. These essential illustrations and character notes need to be collected and put into a Bible for Tale Spin. If you've the motivation, you can help make this a reality!
"I can't draw or do anything creative! What can I do to help the Project?"
If you have access to all the Tale Spin Episodes, you can play an integral part in the reconstruction of the bible. There are several things we need:
Multiple Screen Shots of the Characters.
- We need dedicated persons to collect screen shots of the show that establish what characters look like in the round. For instance, currently we don't have -any- character references for Molly Cunningham or Wildcat. These will be necessary when it comes time to generate their head height construction charts. In order to make certain our model sheets match those of the shows, we have to have as many images collected of the character as can be found. Since the technical aspect of this is kind of hard to discuss without images, a separate thread describing how to do it will be made to help you out.
Screen Shots of specific buildings, vehicles, locations and ports of call.
- Much of the fun and adventure of Tale Spin happens in specific places alongside of specific vehicles and buildings. We will need as many images of these objects as we can get. This will ensure that, when featured in a comic or other illustration, the image holds true to the show. The technique to handling this need will be explained in the thread about Screen Captures.
Character Identity/Personality descriptions.
- Rebecca Cunningham is a shrewed businesswoman who's capable of taking on any project, filing any paperwork imaginable, and calculating basic delivery routes. She knows exactly what phone calls to make and who to talk to. When her business sense isn't enough, she is humble about it and takes steps to improve that knowledge base. The question here is, how do we know this? A decent amount of work has gone into figuring out who Rebecca is and what skills, abilities, limitations, fears, dedications, needs, satisfactions and personal history she has. Much of this information won't be figured out unless these parts of the character design material for the show magically drop out of the sky. Still, someone will have to sit and watch all the episodes featuring the character and write down their behavior so we can figure out things the character does and does not do.
Objects of Focus and Special belongings.
-This is a fun one. Not all episodes feature special objects like the ruby statuette from 'Molly Caudled' but there are some objects that get used fairly often. These can be tools, items with sentimental value or absurd things like that hyper powered mini-fan Buzz gave Baloo. Objects with significance pop up in the show all the time. You can help out by finding and writing a little bit about them so that they could end up being used later.
"Nit-Pickery"
- This is a difficult one to name, let alone describe eloquently so I will try my best. There's no real reason for us to know what a "Shaboozie" is or how many of them it takes to make a "buckaroo." There's also no real reason to know how to draw one or who's face is on it. What is important is that there is a living breathing world inside of the story framework of Tale Spin. There are many factions, countries, currencies and political entities that all have their own agendas, businesses, trade agreements and so forth. This information seems arbitrary and trivial but it does have its importance, especially for the writers. If any of you possess the dedication and time to get this information ironed out for the project, good luck and god speed.
"I don't draw very well but I do know Graphic Design and Video Editing. What can I do?"
Those of you gifted in these branches of art can certainly help out by putting together either video advertising for the Tale Spin Virtual Season or promotional materials for within the site. Steet has a handle on the code but what about all the sigs? What about the motivational music videos? There is quite a bit of content that you can help create that will directly inspire or assuage the frustrations of the Illustrators who will be working on the VS.
Finally, if you can draw, -I- need your help. We can't wait around to see if anyone is going to find any more of the model sheets for the show. We certainly can't wait around to see if anyone else is going to generate that material for us. If you've the courage to hold yourself to the same professional level of production I am, I would dearly accept your help for the VS. As it stands now, it may be months before I can reverse engineer the character art out of the show such that anyone could use it to draw from. If you can help out with this, PM me personally and we'll get this done together!
Remember this, Source Members, the -only- way to eat a whole whale is one bite at a time. This is not going to leap off of the floor and assemble itself for us overnight. We are going to have to work for it and earn every brick for the wall. What you have to keep your eyes on is that when this wall is finished, NO ONE AND NOBODY can take it away from us. It will be our success, our celebration and not even the MOU$E could do as much.
Please post your thoughts and comments and, rather than tell me what you are going to do, go out and do so! Let me and Steet concentrate on reorganizing the material that comes in. Further, he is free to dictate how this material will be posted. For this, the thread now belongs to Steet for Logistics.
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