Another Film

So why decide to make another short film? It's a daunting task in animation, as many of you may know. I've had an idea in my head for close to 4 years now, and it won't go away. The spark of the idea came during the early part of my senior year at CalArts. I was trying to come up with ideas for my final film and this is the idea I came upon; a millionaire cheetah who was lonely. I worked on it for a bit, but soon scrapped it and came up with another idea which became this ice cream film. Over the years since, I've been trying to develop a form of the cheetah idea as a series for tv, but I finally started to realize that I always envisioned it as a stand alone short film. I also realized that the only way I would get it made, and made how I wanted it to be, that I would have to make it myself.
These are the very first drawings I did, back in 2002. They are pretty much in chronological order starting from the top, as much as I can remember anyways.

The main idea started as just a lonely millionaire cheetah alone in a mansion.
I had an immediate segue idea of a cheetah chess champion, but that didn't go very far.

I soon added a boy into the mix. Above is the first drawing I did of them together.
I explored the idea of the boy having a cheetah as a pet, but slowly steered away from that idea.
My goal for right now is to post basically all my "concept" artwork from over the years as I start working on the film. I started with these very first drawings and in the next post will continue with the cheetah's development over the years to the present, and then the boy's development to the present. I haven't really given myself a schedule or timeline really of when I want this film done by. I don't want to rush myself because I want to put the best work I can into it. But I do have a fulltime job, so I have to work on it during my free time.

Right now I'm writing an extensive outline, almost a script, just because I can write down my ideas faster than I can draw them. Of course I will explore different opportunities once I start boarding it. I probably won't divulge too much of the actual story on this blog, just because it'll make it more enjoyable when the film's finished. I'm going to actually animate the film in Flash, but don't start groaning yet. The process I usually take when animating in Flash is very similar to what I would do on paper. I like using as many new drawings as possible. Also, I will probably do layouts on paper for every scene.

So that's the plan so far! I'll try and update as much as I can along the way, and hopefully people find interest in the process. Wish me luck!