AMP: Inception

When in the course of human events an artist is asked to do something he's never done before, things can get kinda scary...

But thank God that's never happened.

In fact, although I've had serious bouts of self-doubt when going into a project, I've always worked with people who were kind and understanding. So, along comes this short film. An animated, short film. Something I've never done before.

So, Cory Taylor asks me to storyboard the movie. Okey-day, no worries; I've done two films before. I've had some experience. Alrighty, whatcha got? Oh, some concept art too? Grand.

The short is about a retired streetlight robot, who's been abandoned in an old warehouse, left plugged into an outlet in the floor. One day, a battery rolls by, just close enough to give him hope for freedom.

So, we begin on an epic journey of discovery (discovering if I can pull it off or not); and from inception to finish, we'll cover all the ideas, concepts and eventual reality of our visions.

We take you now to a little town in East Texas, where Johnny Reighard is trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to pry open his mind with his pen (figuratively) and let the juices flow...

The first ideas that came to mind were predominantly influenced by Wall-E, as my readers will be able to quickly deduce.



Of course, this was before I had even found out what Cory wanted. I just needed to prove to myself that I could draw something even akin to robots.

From there, it evolved, through conversations with Cory and whatever I wanted to arbitrarily do.



I thought it would be very artistic to have a robot with three eyes. Red, yellow and green. The idea was to convey emotion through his light bulbs. But, as it turned out, the concept was too... creepy.

We needed something more sympathetic, cuter...

I think I'll make a series out of this, so that I'll have posts for the future. So, tune in next time to see the further evolution of Amp, from concept to finish.

J.S.R