Saturday, May 31, 2008

The Baby

About eight years ago a few friends and I got together to brainstorm hoping to come up with ideas for animated shows. Maybe something for the networks, maybe the internet. We all just wanted to have some say in the content of shows we worked on. Each of us had been in animation for many years and we sensed a change in the way shows were being developed and promoted and with the rise of Flash as an animation tool we thought we could make a show ourselves and then sell it to the big guys.

This didn't happen.

We had fun that day but, by consensus, we didn't have anything close to a real solid concept. Some ideas were good, but needed more development. Others made us laugh but were, for a variety of reasons, unproduce-able.

One of my ideas wouldn't fade. The concept and title of which stuck with me for a long time.

"Baby's Bottomless Pie Hole" is a title that never left my sieve-like mind. The concept was simple, too. A baby eats voraciously. That's kind of it. There were and are, of course, variations on this but it pretty much stayed like this in my head for quite some time.

I think it was the charming name.

With the recent arrival of our now 16 month old baby, this idea sprung forward and with added inspiration I've been able to design and plan some short animated spots. I've thumbnailed one of them and have ideas for more. The design has come relatively easy (finally) and the process of producing these is one of trial and error.

I would like to share the process as these short cartoons take shape.

For now, here are my preliminary designs for the baby: