Project Cheese

So the scenario is we've all been split into groups to create a short piece of animation. The brief is to realise a script with the words, "yes, yes, yes, yes, no," and it can't exceed ninety seconds and must not be any shorter than thirty.

Currently we have the first full term to create an animatic. Anyway with this brief in mind I came up with the concept of a high tech mouse attempting to pull off a heist of which he attempts to steal a highly expensive piece of cheese from a specialist cheese museum and goes like this...
The scene opens late at night, raining. You see the silhouette of a huge building. Lightning flashes dramatically. It highlights a sign. "Cheese Museum." Next you're confronted by a piece of cheese in a glass case, surrounded by lasers. The shot fades to look like that of a cheep flickering TV screen. Then a silhouette slides into view before it. "Yesss." A mouse with techy goggles leans over the screen an moves some leavers. Back in the room with the cheese a mechanical hand lowers from the ceiling and misses the cheese. Close up on the mouse's paws as he adjusts the leavers. Back with the cheese again the arm moves across a little, lowers and grabs the cheese. It ascends towards the ceiling. The mouse leans closer to the screen, "yes," we see the screen over his shoulder, "yes, YES," The hand squishes the cheese. The mouse is still. He twitches. "NOOOOOOOO!"

Anyway that's my idea. Here are a few character concept sketches I created. They are subject to change. There were two things I knew when I started and that was I wanted this mouse to look nothing like Micky Mouse and the other was I didn't want this character to look fluffy or humanoid. Sometimes the best elements of a character can be found by exaggerating elements of the animal itself.

For example when I saw these images I thought big head, round body, huge eyes, stumpy legs.

These were my first preliminary sketches as I was attempting to define a style.

Once I had found a style I was able to create the rest of its from (while just experimenting) and once I was happy with it I continued with facial expressions.

I simplified it a little and added goggles...and accidentally left the whiskers on the bottom image. Bah!

So that's that. I think I may have landed my self with the director roll some how and I think I'm excited by that but maybe I'm just a little mortified. Meh.