TV series

Tv series

This is the research for the tv series section of the assignment which will expand into the research and development of my idea

My first idea is about a dog called Rufus.

Rufus is a dog that goes out and has many adventures.

E.g. One day when he was out exploring, he fell into a large hole and noticed something sticking out of the earth. Rufus began digging and discovered it was a large dinosaur bone. He dragged it out and showed his owner who asked him where he had found it. Rufus shows him and he calls a news team. Soon an excavation site is set up to dig out the dinosaur skeleton and Rufus is rewarded with a large bone all to himself and his picture gets put in the local newspaper.

This is Rufus. As you can see he is a westie. I wanted to give him a sort of boxy art style instead of a normal fluffy dog which I think adds to his likeability.

This idea came from when my sister and I were younger and we were on long car journeys, my dad used to tell us about a dog called Rufus and about the adventures he used to have to keep us entertained. It is a very fond memory of mine and I thought it would be nice to bring those stories to life for my tv series.

Here is one of the environments Rufus would be in. This is his home and he always curls up by the fire after a long day of exploring.
For this idea the target audience would be mainly young children but I would throw in a few adult references to keep any parents watching entertained. Many animated tv series do this such as the simpsons. You would think it was for children due to the bright colours but there is some humour in there that would go over childrens heads and the adults would catch it.

Idea 2 is called Songbird

This is about a Lyre bird teacher that teaches little birds to find their song and also teaches children about very basic music.
I first came up with idea last year for my woodland creature assignment (you can find the details of that assignment in a previous post on here). The premise was a Lyre bird that could play her tail like a harp since there is a musical instrument called the harp. After I had finished it I saw there was potential to advance it further into a tv series.

Here is the Lyre bird design I came up with for the project. As you can see the character could grab her tail and play it. I liked it because the mortar board hat was the only tell tale sign that the character is a teacher.

Heres the set design, I made it to look like a classroom but with some forest like elements within it as well. The plain blackboard was good becuase if I had chosen this one to make into the tv series, the notes and all the educational information would appear on the board.

This was the set in its entirety. I would have animated it using stop motion and since the set was already completed, I was then have just needed to recreate the characters so that they had an armeture and they could move.
This would have also been targeted at children around the age of 5 years old which I learnt after a little bit of research into the matter.

http://www.babycenter.com/404_when-can-we-start-music-lessons_6876.bc
http://www.childrensmusicworkshop.com/resources/articles/whentostart/

Idea 3 was titled Super Dan


In a world where superheroes are a real presence, super Dan is not one of them. Super Dan has absolutely no powers but has always dreamed of being a super hero. Dan makes his own costume and tries to keep up with the other heroes but always seems to add to the problems rather than take them away.

 And here he is, Super Dan in all his glory. I like this character as he is a big nerd that has a passion for superheroes but he has done something that not many of us have attempted though always dreamed of and tried to make himself into a super hero. The first step for any budding hero however, the suit. Though not very good, he still has some sort of crusading attire and his disposal. Dans costume is made up of a red t-shirt with his logo sewn on, blue sweat pants, his underwear on the outside of his pants (like any good superhero should do), red wellington boots, his mothers yellow kitchen gloves, a utility belt and a blue towel for a cape.

This is the main enviroment for the tv series and would always start here to the proceed out into the hero filled city. This is Dans secret base, otherwise known as his bedroom. It is filled with superhero memorabilia and you can even see a poster of his own costume by his desk behind his sewing machine. There would be many other heroes that I would have created in order to flesh out this universe. This animation would have been mainly for adults dispite its cartoony appearence.
After looking at all my ideas,  I'm going to go with the Rufus idea as I love the direction it's going and since we are making it into a book, I can make it look amazing once I flesh it out a bit ad add a few more characters into it which I already have planned.

Rufus 

The first thing I did was try and think of 10 different episode ideas. This is what I came up with:

1.  The discovery - finds a dinosaur bone

2.  The mysterious smoke - barbeque

3. A new friend

4.  The Easter hunt

5. A trip to the park

6.  The windy day - finds a hat and tries to return it

7.  Rufus' birthday

8.  The spooky evening - Halloween

9. The snow day - big snowball fight in the street

10. Christmas!

 I then went on to creating the universe for Rufus and his adventures. I thought a good start would be to do a map like view of the world he lives in.

What I have also done here is number all the areas that each episode takes place at which I thought was a smart thing to do as you can see a dogs universe isn't huge yet a curious dog such as Rufus.
Next I came up with a few examples of environments that Rufus would play in:

Here is Rufus' street. It's quite plain as you can see but to a puppy, it is filled with adventure and things to do.

Here is the street but dressed for episode 8 which is halloween. I could also have children in costumes running up and down going door to door.

 Here is the street again but this time dressed up for episode 9 and 10 which is the snow day and Christmas. For episode 9 I would make a few changes such as add more snow and piles of it the the children could take cover behind. I could even switch out the snowmans top hat for a pan to act as a helment for protection. When it comes to the final episode I could add different coloured lights to the trees and the windows of the houses.

Here is the ennvironment for episode two-the mysterious smoke. The smoke is coming from the bbq in this garden party but the smoke rising above the houses is what gets Rufus interested, not to mention the smell.

This is like a screenshot from the first episode where Rufus discovers a dinosaur bone. You can really see scale here and see that Rufus is quite a small dog.
I also did a little experimentation with how the show could look by putting a vignette around him for style.

This was the result which I quite like but I'm not sure if the show woud look quite right if it was constantly surrounded by a vignette since they are typically used to portray dreams so the audience might accidentally think that the whole show is the activites of someones dreams which is not what I'm going for.
Something else I did was create two other characters which are designed to bring in a little adult humour for any parents watching with their children to keep them entertained.

And here they are. Basil (on the left) and Jasper (on the rght). These two will never be seen walking anywhere or being active in any way. They will always be in a place where they can watch Rufus' antics and they will simply sit there and comment and make remarks on what Rufus is doing which is where the adult references will come into play.
Here is a drawing of Rufus all dressed up for Easter and Halloween which I think looks really nice:

I decided to play around with the style some more and I had a look at an animation called Angela Anconda which is famous for being animated in a photo collage style. Photo collage is where you take images and textures and make them into something else.
Here is an example of the show:

As you can see it takes images of peoples faces and malipulates them to make them seem different and put them on a cartoon like body. If you look at the desks, you can also see a wood texture has been used. Another person who does this is a man called Johnathan Mchugh who creates similar images for newpapers.

I decided to have a go at this style myself:

This is an image of Rufus' owner with jean material pants, sandpaper arms, leather texure shoes and checkered shirt. The background is also images of grass and a brick wall. I actually really like this style as Rufus looks so different and really stands out which is perfect. It worked out so well in fact that I recreated my street environment in the same style:

I think it looks really good and I am going to use this style for the show.

Another thing I did was think about a logo for the show because I would also need one for the book.
I had a little play around on photoshop and here are the results:

I quite like these, especially the ones with Rufus in it. However, the font does look a little childish. I will look at real dog food brands to see what they have done.

After some research I came to the conclusion that I needed to make the font a little more formal so I did some experimenting and came up with these two:

 I really like these two designs and after some descision making I decided to go for the bottom one because the font is more pleasing to the eye and I also like the little Rufus peering through the U.

I then used this to make the book cover.

This was my first design which is nice but it was pointed out to me that my name is too small and also I dont really need the big image of Rufus since he is already in the title so I altered it.

Here is the new logo and I used that for my front cover as it looks really good. Nice and simple.

The next thing I did was start the book. Here are the pages that are in the book:

 This was the hardest page for me as I have never thought about the finances that go with running a tv series.

 I really like the little paw prints that the numbers are in. I think it really gives this page some charm.

 I also had to make a sample ofthe script from one of my episodes which was interesting to think about as my tv series has no dialog that is spoken by the characters. Instead it is narrated as if someone is telling a story.

 I had to really cut down the synopsis' as each one was around 200 words long which was too much as would have taken up 10 pages of the book just for the synopsis' e.g.

The windy day

It was a blustery Autumn day and Rufus was sat inside by the window watching the leaves on the ground get whipped up into a mini hurricane in the front garden and blow across the road. Rufus put his head in his paws and was about to fall asleep when suddenly something caught his attention. A hat had blown into the garden and got caught on a branch for a brief second. Rufus tilted his head curiously before the hat was once again swept up in the wind and carried off. Rufus scampered to his doggy door and went outside in pursuit of the hat. He looked down the road and saw it in the road. Rufus ran towards the hat. Just as he was about to pick it up, a newspaper was blown into his face and by the time Rufus had shaken it off the hat was once again carried off by the wind. Rufus ran down the pavement enjoying his game of chase with his invisible friend that held the hat. As the wind died it descended into someone's garden. Rufus scrabbled over the fence and managed to catch the hat before it landed in a muddy puddle. Out of breath but happy he'd won the game, he left the garden and walked back down the road in search of where the hat had come from. As he was beginning to lose hope, he noticed a flustered looking woman rustling round in the hedge nearby. Rufus guessed it was hers and trotted over to her. He sat at her feet and managed a muffled bark from under the hat. The woman jumped and looked down to see Rufus holding her hat. She gasped and thanked Rufus for returning it to her. She asked him where he lived and Rufus took her back to his house where she thanked his owner for having such a good dog. Rufus got lots of strokes before she left and Rufus settled down, happy with the knowledge that he'd helped someone in need.

As you can see this was way too long and really needed to be cut down.

 As well as this I also added page breaks in between each section so that the reader can clearly see where one section ends and another begins. This was just as simple as putting the title on a page with paw prints around it to make it fit with the book. e.g.

 Conclusion
I thoroughly enjoyed this project as it was really fun creating a tv series and making a book to it. It will be amazing when I get the book and I will be able to take it with me when I visit companies if I ever want to attempt to get it made.
If I was to do anything again I would have really experimented with the style of Rufus and seen how many different designs I could come up with as I sort of instantly thought of an image of Rufus that I really liked and stuck with it without exploring the possibilites of other variations.