As a company we are taking a long, sleepless endeavor down the road of stop motion animation for our upcoming project Robotica: Changes In The Air, a story about a lonely robot who leads a mundane life in segregated Priceville with his pup Kurbis when he falls in love with his human neighbor, Zucca. You are probably asking yourself how they are neighbors in a segregated town. In Priceville the robots live on one side of the road and humans on the other, they have to walk on different sides of the sidewalk and some businesses will only serve one or the other. Robotica and Zucca live at the end of their cul de sac with a bunch of fences between them – although the fences aren’t enough to keep troublesome Kurbis out of Zucca’s yard completely. Nothing can stop Kurbis when she smells a pumpkin.
Robotica is a character I have been working on since 2010 when I first dreamt him up while doodling at work. I knew his personality and how he looks but I wasn’t 100% dead set on the storyline. Finding an artist that I trusted with my lil’ nugget was the hardest part but I’m happy to say that six years later I found the perfect artist and visionary who came with her own character – Kurbis. Kelsey has been working with Kurbis for over ten years now and really felt that she deserved to be in a movie. Putting our characters together and seeing how they would interact is how we developed the storyline and collaborated to create Zucca, our love interest.
LtoR: Robotica, Kurbis Zucca
It was fascinating to see how Kelsey was able to take my early sketch of Robotica and utilize the technology of 3D Printing with a sprinkle of ingenuity and create our first prototype last month. We brought him out to the Sunscreen Film Festival‘s first Film Market hosted by Indyoh and set him up on the table, showing people how we plan on keeping costs low by utilizing magnets to attache certain pieces and move them. We got a lot of great feedback from some wonderful people and had a great time unveiling him to the community.
Stop motion is a tedious style of filmmaking that is very time consuming because it is about stringing together still images to create the illusion of movement with the knowledge that the human eye sees 24 frames per second. That is equal to 24 still images in a single second and every image needs to be staged perfectly to have fluid, continuous movement. It is exhilarating and exhausting. The long hours of focus will be rewarded with an amazing finished product.
Now we are entering the crazy world of crowdfunding with Seed&Spark in an effort to bring together a larger budget than our own pockets (which is what we have been using so far) to give this project all the materials and attention it deserves to be something you will want to watch and share with your friends. We are even holding a contest! You can learn about it here:
The contest gives you, the audience, an opportunity to be a part of the film by sketching up a design for a robot and sharing with us on Facebook before Saturday May 21st and we will put your name into a drawing for every dollar you contribute to our campaign. So if you contribute $25 you have 25 chances to see your robot in the movie.
Will you be a supporter of Team Robotica? Show your love by giving us a share on Facebook or a follow on Seed&Spark!
Dream Across The World 