Scream Street Competition Entry

Scream Street Competition Entry 

Introduction

This post is about the entry I created for the CBBC Scream Street competition. We were tasked to create a storyboard, lasting no more than a minute, about two characters that  have already been developed and would be in the show. Scream Street is going to be a new series by the CBBC and the competition gave students the opportunity to create a short sketch with two characters that will be in the show. There will be 5 winners; they will create 5 short sketches. I am not sure when they will show these but I can guess it would be around the advert space or at the end of the show, as these are only sketches/ short stories. The sets, characters and props have already been created; therefore the challenge were to take these and create a short lasting no ore than a minute.

I found this a challenge as I never done anything like this before but that was part of the fun. As it felt there were rules around the characters that were not apparent when you create your own characters because you understand how your character works. But if you are creating a story with someone else's character, you have to learn about that character and take careful steps about what he/she can/can't do.

The two characters we had were called 'Dig' and 'Lulu'. Dig is a dog whose bottom half  of his body is just a skeleton. Lulu is a large leech/ worm creature which has a collar much like a pet.
Here are some images from the website as well as the link from the character page where people can familiarize with the characters.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/9b3HJWRrDhr43zB2ptDfWL/scream-street-animated-shorts-tools-tips

Production

Initial Sketches/ Ideas

From this information I just mind mapped and just tried to sketch the characters to gain an understanding of them first. 

Even from first seeing the characters I always had this one idea with playing fetch. This was because I had an idea of how it would play out and it also pokes at the idea of a dog playing fetch with a leech and the leech is fetching (rather than the dog).

From the simple/ short story 'restrictions' I gained inspiration from the simple stories from cartoons such as 'Looney Tunes', 'Tom and Jerry' and 'Wacky Races'. From these cartoons taking the recipe of a character getting revenge on another or for a certain character to get what he/she deserves. i.e. The Coyote from the road runner cartoons, his contraptions always backfire. Or as another example: when Mutley is laughing at Dick Dastertly after his plans have failed, Dastertly hits Mutly on the head. 

As I already had the idea of the story in my head, I based the character sheets off the story or the faces the characters would pull at certain points in the story. This is especially shown on Dig's sheet, from when he is laughing to when he gets hits on the head by a flower pot.  

Storyboard

Using the templates provided on the website, I created the storyboard. I decided to create the full story first to see how long it was and to then cut or extend the storyboard if needed. 

As you can see it is supposed to be a simple and short story and I wanted to go along a more comical route as the amount of time provided is just enough for a short gag. 

I then took the photographed sheets and created an animatic, to see how the story would flow with timing as well as adding sound. 

Final Video

Link to video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSLpe92ROUY

Link to video on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/144815196

Conclusion

I am happy with the overall production of this entire entry. As i created this in a very short space of time and was something completely different. I feel that I have learnt a lot from this too from handling characters and story-boarding. 

I would improve this by making the storyboard clearer as well as adding clearer/more appropriate sound effects to the animatic.