A student has been given the assignment to come up with a story within a certain deadline. The student has a number of ideas which appear as a thought bubble above his head. Unfortunately, every time he tries to get them from his head into the computer he suffers from writer’s block and they disappear. We see the student struggling to capture his ideas and present them in his assignment. In the end, he is presented with a unique solution, from an unexpected source, to prevent the idea from disappearing before he gets it written down.

The following blocks contain some of the ideas (including the one finally chosen) that were considered. I have left in the chosen synopsis as it appeared in its original form. The others were rejected for various reasons, but have been left here just for the record.

This is actually quite a straightforward kind of idea.

Basically, we (I) try to animate an otherwise normally inanimate object or series of objects. For example, I was thinking of making the objects on a persons desktop come to life and play around a little (interact). So pens, pencils, paperclips, staplers etc. all come to life and interact with each other in some way.

This, of course, gives me plenty of scope and freedom. However, I feel (and maybe it is just my perception) that every demo reel seems to contain such an animation sequence. Whether this is a good or bad thing is open to debate of course. I also would like to include some facial rigging and animation in the short, and try to use as many of the tools in the production pipeline as possible, and I'm not sure this would be the story to do it.

Having said all that, it is a "feasible" project to do.

A slightly more complex idea.

We see an art student preparing to begin an assignment. Initially, he seems to be full of inspiration and ideas, but then he seems to get writers block in some form. Dismissing ideas one by one. (Stop me if this seems familiar ... ) We see the student rummaging through books, comics, and other media desparately in search of new inspiration but none seems to be forthcoming.

Suddenly the student has a brainwave, and we see him jump busily into his work. In the end, we see the animation that he has been working on is exactly the scenario that we have seen him suffer ourselves.

I like this idea, but I am not sure how it will translate to the audience. Will I be able to get the idea across simply? Or will the audience just be left bemused at the end of it all?

It has an additional appeal because I feel I will be to incorporate facial animation, some speech, and use more of the production techniques in this project.

This idea takes a musical approach

Basically, I would make this a song and dance type animation featuring comical characters. I was thinking of using a mouse (characterture) and a number of cats. The scene opens with the cats lounging around inside a room (kitchen perhaps) when an obviously female mouse character (kind of sassy looking) struts on to the floor. The mouse then starts singing the song "I just wanna make love to you" by Etta James to one of the cats. This takes the main cat character by surprise, and causes no end of amusement for his other catty pals.

I like the idea and I think it would be a fun project/short to do, but it has the big problem of Intellectual Property (ie. the song), and I would be running a risk of falling foul of the copyright laws.

Now this idea, I would really love to be able to do.

This is an idea I had awhile back, and I was thinking of making this into a mod using the DoomIII/Quake4 engine.

Basically, the short would be made as trailer for a movie. It would feature lots of different cut-scenes as movie-trailers do, and it would give the audience an idea of what the movie would be like.

The title of the (ficticious) movie really gives the game away - if you're a fan - It would be something along the lines of "The return to the Sulaco". The basic premise being that the movie would feature the discovery of the near-derelict Sulaco floating in space, and the attempted recovery of the ship by another group of marines. Of course, if you are familiar with the franchise, you can imagine what lies in wait for them.

I would love to do this. Who would pass up the chance of modeling the Sulaco, and modeling and rigging a Xenomorph? BUT .. it's the same problem as the previous idea with respect to copyright and intellectual property. Furthermore, it would be an incredibly ambitious project to attempt probably too ambitious (but then again you should be prepared to push yourself).