It was happened to be a little coincident on my 2nd idea, The Pianist who Failed to Play His Piano that back in 80 years ago, a similar idea had been created in black & white Mickey cartoons.
Here's my initial sketches/ thumbnails of my 2nd idea:
It's about a pianist who didn't know he's actually playing a piano monster.
However after my 2nd presentation which we've decided to pick the 1st idea,
I found this cartoon during my research,
Mickey was playing a self-play piano! I have never seen this before I developed my 2nd idea but a similar idea was far well created in year 1929, it's 80 YEARS AGO.
I'm so glad I did not pick this as my thesis project idea.
In preproduction class, we need to figure out what we want to do for our thesis project. We'll propose the ideas and class instructor will guide/ supervise us until we get a solid, complete idea or story.
Each of us was required to present 3 different ideas at the beginning of the class and we'll pick the most interesting/ potential idea among the 3.
So the very first 3 ideas of mine:
i. The PRE 'Wanna Be Oddie'
The main character was trying to buy a coke but his coin has rolled underneath the vending machine accidentally.
He thought the big guy was tried to help him but the big guy took the coin and bought himself a drink instead.
As the result, the main character was trying to get back his coin/ drink back.
ii. A Pianist who Failed to Play his Piano
iii. A Mad Scientist and His Monkey Assistant
As you can see, this was the very first rough sketches that I did just to present my basic ideas.
I had more sketches and ideas before I have my PRE Wanna Be Oddie in the coke and vending machine story but I just couldn't find those sketches.
After the first presentation, I was required to continue in develop these 3 ideas but after the 2nd presentation in the following week, we decided to pick the 1st idea as my thesis project.
We always have inspiration of our works, and what inspired me to create this project, The Wanna Be Oddie was the old black and white cartoons.
So an idea came into my mind when I watch Steamboat Willie, I thought it would be fun if I make this into 3d. I also realized we've seen tons of animation short films but there're very rare of them had done in vintage B&W cartoon style.
As I moved on to seek for the possibilities, I noticed there's big copyright issue in remaking 3d Mickey. At the mean time, I was already a fan of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit when I studied Disney's history.
I find Oswald is actually more charm than Mickey, but he's the one who has been almost forgotten and nobody would ever mentioned about him.
So I decided to make a short film that dedicated to Oswald, rather than Mickey, but somehow I realized it difficult to separate Oswald and Mickey as they shared many similarities.
In the beginning of 2009, as it's time to present my thesis idea in preproduction class, (as Academy of Art MFA animation student, we need to finish a 2-3 mins animated short film as our thesis.) I knew this is what I going to do for my thesis: Remake the old cartoon style in 3D.
In the next post, I'll show the very early stage of my story ideas and sketches.
notes: The Wanna Be Oddie is a student short film that produced by me, Ben Lam that has no relationship with any properties of Disney Corporation. Any Disney related topics, videos, images that I post here is only for the purpose of references, researches and studies.
