ballp.it
Projects => The F Plus => Topic started by: Lemon on May 24, 2016, 08:59:17 pm
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Okay, we’re going to make The Trapezoid Kids1 a reality, and you’re going to help! These is is how this is gonna work…
This is a link to the living script for the project (https://docs.google.com/a/thefpl.us/document/d/1L9HQz2sHBICuCK-sH4fzgCncwcDkmyZ0QCZ3NNsRcLI/edit?usp=sharing) on Google Docs. Request access to this document and then start collaborating with the other writers on a script. Every person with access will be in “Suggest” mode, where everything you write will need to be approved by either Portaxx or myself. This is our first time trying this method, so it might be a little weird, but I think we can make it work.
HERE’S THE GOAL: We are going to make a “parody” cartoon of the Trapezoid Kids. It will be no more than five minutes in length. It will look like garbage. And you will be partially to blame for this.
Please play nice in the document and prioritize brevity. This is not The Secret of NIMH. This is Trapezoid Kids. So give it the respect it deserves.
We’ll keep this thread updated as things progress.
1: That is, a “parody” of the Trapezoid Kids, using The Dozerfleet Founder’s own definition of what “parody” means.
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Now, what I am concerned with is this: how much like the muppet babies will this be? (I.E. shall we contain some sort of geometric baby sitter figure?)
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Let me know if the access is weird. We haven't tried doing something with this suggest mode thing yet.
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I can trust you guys to create a hilariously inept script.
All I ask is that the character designs and shapes involve as few pen nodes as possible, say six or eight at the max. Everything should look boxy and clunky and sub-South Park level that only the worst kind of year 2000-era Flash animation can deliver.
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If there isn't an "acute" angle pun I'm going to be upset.
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There better not be a single actual trapezoid.
Are you going to kickstart this? Will there be a patreon?
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When can we have the even worse spinoff the Trapezius Kids? Or is that already a documentary on childhood steroid use?
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Sorry for all the long heavy stuff -- I don't know if I'm particularly funny, but I try really hard all the time and I'm bad at turning it off.
I think a lot of the jokes people are suggesting are potentially funny, but because they're based on references, memes, puns, etc., I know how they're going to turn out as soon as I see them. If I'm a viewer and I know what joke I'm being told and I have to wait for it to end, I'm likely not laughing very much at it.
There's also humor where the fun is in relating to other people who are involved in the jokes -- The F-Plus is about this, Candid Camera is about this, "It's Always Sunny" is about this, but I'm not sure you can make catharsis happen in a five minute cartoon.
I think we need to figure out what we want to say about Dozerfleet, then how we can make it surprising to a viewer who already knows the stuff we know about Dozerfleet. Some themes I see a lot in what people are suggesting:
- the plot should be that Dozerfleet is really unlikeable, and his friends desert him
- we should reference something the F-Plus did
- we should reference something I like personally
- we should do something absurd, like have dinosaurs on unicycles or have everyone speak English really badly
I think you could turn each of these into something pretty good, but you have to not deliver it exactly as written. Evidence suggests those are the jokes everybody already expects, so when you start one everyone knows what's going to happen and it's probably only going to be mildly funny. I think we should throw in plot events that people won't expect, after those things happen. For instance:
- Dozerfleet is happy to be alone and have no friends, because he can write his own friends on his wiki. Only for some reason they hate him and he can't stop them from hating him.
Even after you do something like that, you can't really get complacent. It's probably not enough to just say "his wiki friends didn't like him, the end" -- you have to follow that up with something funny too, like "one of his wiki friends starts a rival wiki about how much Dozerfleet sucks." Even if you've already told a joke -- once you've told the viewer what he's going to see and you're giving him that, no twist, I think you've turned things into "wait for the joke to be done, mildly amused" instead of "this is hilarious, I had no idea this was going to happen." (This was a pain in the ass for my Liberal Crime Squad topic, because people kept requesting specific things and getting mad that they didn't see exactly those specific things.)
I think to make this stuff work we need to figure out what we're going to say about Dozerfleet Founder, and then take that unsurprising stuff and come up with plot points that convey it in a surprising way. When we present this guy, the audience won't know much about him, so if we present evidence that vaguely suggests he's not Dozerfleety in a particular dimension, then reveal it in an event the audience wasn't expecting, I think that will be a surprise.
Example (from doc, by me, sorry): imagine Dozerfleet Founder getting demoted to last chair in band. That's unsurprising: we kinda know his work ethic is bad. But then he finds out that the other guys who are last chair in band are now his friends, and they're into revenge and stuff too, and suddenly he likes them. I think that's actually a surprise: we would have expected him to shut himself off from those people because they're different from him, and he's sheltered and anxious. Characterization-wise, this conveys that he has a similar personality to people we think he doesn't like. We probably knew that, but weren't thinking about it, because the rest of the story set us up to think he was going to be miserable and alone. I think a surprise like that could be pretty funny.
Oh yeah, the other thing -- I think that a lot of this reference humor and stuff will look a little desperate, especially since spoofs and stuff are very style-over-substance when you don't write them into the plot. I think that if you do a few things that look desperate, everything else looks desperate too. If you do a lot of stuff that's not relevant to your main humor source, I think you just get people into a frame of mind of expecting things to go nowhere. Think of how much good humor you've seen that would legitimately be improved by adding a dinosaur. (don't give the snide memey "dinosaurs make everything better" kind of answer -- actually think about whether the joke is still funny)
Even look at really goofy comedians like Monty Python: substitute a velociraptor into "Self Defense Against Fresh Fruit" or "How Not To Be Seen." Those are both skits about hypocrisy/sanctimoniousness, where something absurd happens too. If you throw absurd things in that don't involve hypocrisy/sanctimoniousness, I think those skits are much more difficult to interpret.
Hopefully this helps dudes who have similar opinions on humor to me, and doesn't offend dudes who don't.
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I think whatever script is written, should be put through google translate a few times so it's less legible. Preferably, each character is translated into different languages from each other
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How faithful are we being to the source material? Google translate is a fun idea, but I feel like dozerfleet isn't actually that bad at english. His writing is probably terrible, but he can spell and construct a sentence.
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I think whatever script is written, should be put through google translate a few times so it's less legible. Preferably, each character is translated into different languages from each other
A Meat, May 26, 2016, 03:03:58 am
This is the sort of thing that I think is funny, but it's a different joke. You could do a funny "this cartoon was horribly translated" cartoon, but I think it would be super different from the Dozerfleet cartoon.
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I think whatever script is written, should be put through google translate a few times so it's less legible. Preferably, each character is translated into different languages from each other
A Meat, May 26, 2016, 03:03:58 am
This is the sort of thing that I think is funny, but it's a different joke. You could do a funny "this cartoon was horribly translated" cartoon, but I think it would be super different from the Dozerfleet cartoon.
Zekka, May 26, 2016, 10:26:05 am
There could be some sort of evil foreigner trapezoid who talks like that, because that's what Dozerfleet would do.
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There could be some sort of evil foreigner trapezoid who talks like that, because that's what Dozerfleet would do.
A Meat, May 26, 2016, 10:39:41 am
Yeah, I think you could turn that into something. I think just having that character would not be super funny by itself. It feels to me like less of a joke, more of a punchline or part of the setup to a joke.
Maybe Dozerfleet goes to a Chinese place and he's super scared because there's a Chinese flag on the wall, xiaolongbao on the table, other really unfamiliar stuff like that. The waiter starts talking like a badly-translated fortune cookie and then Dozerfleet bursts out crying. "Oh, I'm sorry. Most of the customers really like it when I talk like that," the waiter apologizes. He switches to normal English instead, then brings out some burgers, fries, and barbecue ribs. (Only the ribs are too sticky, so Dozerfleet can't cope again.)
This stuff doesn't feel funny enough to me that I would immediately act on it, but if you thought about it a lot I bet you could come up with some material.
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Considering what a long-winded, obnoxious, ideologically-deranged bore The Dozerfleet Founder is on his wiki, I think the best thing to do is just take the most ridiculous/horrifying chunks and put them in the mouth of the "leader" character of the Trapezoid Kids. Because that's what he'd do if he ever actually wrote this shit.
EDIT: Yes I edited this post because I forgot a comma, what of it?
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Idea for the plot:
The Trapezoid Kids are randomly hired by a Dozerfleet human stand-in to be stars for his media. Most of the trapezoids immediately come under the same delusions of grandeur that Dozerfleet has, but one (maybe the girl one, as it would allow for exploration of Dozerfleet's casual sexism and also she's only one who's an actual fucking trapezoid) is suspicious of Dozerfleet and tries to convince the others that Dozerfleet is only going to make them look like idiots. As the rest of the trapezoids become more and more like Dozerfleet, the lone trapezoid finds Agents Spitz and Mutters (characters from the "movie"), who reveal that Dozerfleet has been running this scheme before and for a long time. A talking pen accompanying the agents recounts how Dozerfleet pulled the same trick with his group of friends, and how they all got arrested for "felony douchebaggery" after Dozerfleet groomed them. The lone trapezoid rushes back to save her friends, but finds them and Dozerfleet all dying, after Dozerfleet refused to let any of them use a condom to protect from a rampaging STD monster. Dozerfleet dies, and the remaining trapezoids survive, though emergency surgery means they had to become squares.
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I've got the day free tomorrow, so I might try to knock out a quick draft of the script! I'll go through everything that's been posted here and on the shared document, incorporate whichever seem good, and see what people here think.
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I may also do a draft, but it's probably going to be biased towards my opinionated crap, which based on the doc is probably different from Nikaer's opinionated crap.
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School ended today, so I will also attempt to assist with the draft (and avoid using memes), hopefully I will be of some use.
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I'll put in no effort and just wait for the final product. Goodbye!
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I'll try to step out of the process at this point. My opinions are in the doc and I think that's about as much as I should contribute. I'm a problem-solver who works well within defined parameters, but I'm not a writer or a creator. I will watch the comments and I'm excited to see what happens!
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I think so far Aljonso has the most promising plot. It's concise in premise but there's a lot of room for 5 minutes of play. Applying some of Zekka's wonderful suggestions to it would, I am sure, bear fruit. The basic plot itself calls for Dozerfleet to corrupt the shapes to his influence, so right off the bat we've covered a justification for 80% of everyone's shit-talking-Dozerfleet needs as we show the audience what he thinks of as ideal and upstanding. The brief nod to Stationery Warriors as prior victims is also pretty funny, dunno if it's final draft funny but it made me smile. A lot of people have been talking about jokes based on the rhombuses being rhombuses etc, and it's hard to think of a way to do that without taking exclusive time for it. I poked around playing with the fact that they're never specified to be paper-thin or whatever, just shapes, but that's clunky too and the only short-form gag I could think of based on that was ending the cartoon with a side-angle that reveals one of the characters just extends infinitely into the background. Not the best. I think my current contender is just having the characters referred to as different 4-sided shapes every time they're mentioned in the script, emphasizes how little it matters despite being part of the show's title.
Also HI BALLP.IT!
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I think we are focusing way too much on attacking Dozerfleet personally, trying to mock his personal failings and struggles in life. If we are trying to make this cartoon more accessible to a larger audience, and have more meat in its general comedy (which is what I think Zekka was getting at with his post). Also, I apologize for spiting out the references and meme shit, I was trying to find some foundation and style from which we can expand from, and I see that we are past that phase now.
From how our ideas have developed, it appears that we want to make a clear message about Dozerfleet's ideology and egotism, which alienates him from performing well as socially functioning human being, as well as a creator. I think we can express this pretty well in a single, five minute skit, but a lot of people's proposals for the plot appear to be a bit overly ambitious and reference heavy. I like Aljonso's idea, but I think that would work better for an entire television episode, not a five minute short. I think Zekka is spot on when he talks about expanding out from a single concept, but always linking back to that concept, even if you are making a reference.
What I personally think we should focus on is Dozerfleet's casual sexism, both because it is one of his most pervasive themes throughout his 'work,' and because it's a pretty pervasive thing throughout the internet in general.
While the audience for this short is primarily fans of the F Plus and people on Ballpit, we should at least try to make it accessible to a wider audience, I mean, I doubt Portaxx would wanna spend so much time animating something that is basically a five minute circle jerk. No, I think the character's and subject matter should be reference enough, at least for the major aspects of the short. We need to look at her previous short (the one with Pokemon being interviewed) for an example, because, while it is probably funnier to a well-versed fan of Pokemon, to someone like me, who has only passing knowledge of it, it was still very funny. Look at the F Plus's jokes as well, while they usually contain references to outside things, or even references to itself, it is always to take advantage of the absurdity of what they are referencing, and could be equally as funny if the original thing it stems from didn't exist.
Thus, my proposal for the plot is this (it takes a lot from Nikaer Drakin's suggestion):
The short is a PSA about STDs, which the Rhombus Tykes are here to explain to their impressionable young fans. At first the PSA is very childish in the way it explains things, trying to scoot around explaining what sex is by using almost baby language (this could be a nod to the adult babies stuff, but even if it isn't it relates back to the original idea). The audience surrogate, and ostensible main character is polly, the female of the group. She will be played as an incredibly naive character, while the others appear as figures of authority (though they are all ultimately mouths for Dozerfleet). The character of Polly at this point will represent the innocent and stupid side of the dichotomous image Dozerfleet has of women.
As the short goes on, however, the male shapes continually, and casually, present accusations against Polly, to her horror and constant attempt to defend herself. Each STD that they will explain through scenarios will have different characters playing out different roles, but it is always the rhombuses playing out these scenarios. In all of these scenarios, however, it is presented as if Polly (the stand in for all women) is responsible for everything bad that could possibly happen. Polly will challenge this, but because Dozerfleet is supposedly writing this, she will always be too stupid to break the flimsy arguments the others make.
Eventually, Polly will storm off because she does not want to deal with this abuse anymore, and one of the male shapes will have to take her place. Because Dozerfleet is now angry, the other shapes become much more aggressive to the character that has taken Polly's place (maybe Enclo) and start diverging from their original topic to the point where they are doing nothing but violently (comically) trying to assault the stand in for women. In the end, though, Polly returns to be the naive victim again, and Dozerfleet calms down, bringing the short back down to a more casual misogyny, like earlier.
You don't have to go with this exact idea, but I think the basic plot structure could work well with a comedy short based on repetition. If you object to anything said above, or just want to expand on what I have said, then I graciously await your response.
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I'm not sure what Portaxx's thoughts are on this currently, but my own personal approach is that while I've got personal opinions on how the thing could go, I'd rather let the Writer's Room hash out the structure and end up with a script they're happy with. After which point Portaxx and I can work on enacting it.
Which is to say, please figure this out amonst yourselves.
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I've written a possible script treatment which I estimate at about ~4:30 long. (knowing my luck, it could be as long as nine minutes if I'm a shitty estimator) I'm going to be linking in the GoogleDoc and in here. Plunder freely from it!
Trapezoid Kids: Pilot (http://lpaste.net/raw/5519414063513206784)
PS: I just realized "Comert" is actually "CORNERT" Uh, in my script he's COMERT. I thought that was a stupid name.
PS2: I like Nikaer's dialogue a lot better than mine, but I don't know how to make that work in such a short format.
E: This version's basically obsolete, since imho NIf's changes make a massive big difference. See next page.
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Looks like we've got 2 viable scripts! Thanks to Zekka and Nikaer Drekin for spending your free time on writing these!
Are there any other scripts that we should consider? Not that there's a hard deadline or anything. If anyone wants to write a script but needs time, feel free to chime in.
The two we have so far are excellent and distinct. I think we need to page Portaxx and Lemon at this point to take a look at the length. Nikaer's looks like it will run long, but I think it could be condensed a bit and still tell the story effectively. It'd be good to have an animator's eye on both scripts since they're formatted differently and might need a different approach to editing since the stories and dialogue are so different.
Yeah, I know, I said I was going to step out of the creative process. I just like organizing things. I am really jazzed about this and I was thrilled to read the scripts. Thank you both again! [yay][yay][yay]
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(Note: I originally wrote mine without looking at Nikaer's, then looked at Nikaer's after.)
My impressions right now: most of the dialogue in the second half of my script is weaker than the dialogue in the first half. Most of my characterization comes from moment-to-moment gags, and my characters are super stock to facilitate this. Nikaer's are mostly one-note, but most of them deliver more than one kind of gag and the pacing makes them feel a little less forced.
Dr. Kevorkian in mine is kind of an asspull and I tell the same joke more times than I would like in delivering Pagliacci's outro in the final scene. If Pagliacci did something more interesting I think it would improve my script. I don't have any glaring inadequacies like that to point out in Nikaer's.
I'd like to just slather a little more dialogue everywhere, probably after the fashion of Nikaer, but I'm worried it would break the time constraint. There's just a whole lot more overt mocking in his, and better wordplay.
I don't have a strong opinion on which plot I like better. I think Nikaer's is much more on-the-nose and holds better to genre conventions for an old cartoon. I had some of the structure, but didn't really hold to it: he kept the structure and kept a lot of the superficial stuff that comes with the genre. I think mine is probably more surprising but the pacing is rough.
I'd like to do an editing pass of mine to correct this stuff but not really until after someone else delivers thoughts on what worked, what didn't.
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Do either of you want a close reading with comments on your script? I'd be happy to do that. I'm not a genius writer, so you'll have to take my comments with a heap of salt. I am thorough and I do consider myself an exceedingly good proofreader.
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Do either of you want a close reading with comments on your script? I'd be happy to do that. I'm not a genius writer, so you'll have to take my comments with a heap of salt. I am thorough and I do consider myself an exceedingly good proofreader.
Nifty Nif, May 30, 2016, 06:25:28 pm
Yes, if you were to do that I would appreciate it.
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Do either of you want a close reading with comments on your script? I'd be happy to do that. I'm not a genius writer, so you'll have to take my comments with a heap of salt. I am thorough and I do consider myself an exceedingly good proofreader.
Nifty Nif, May 30, 2016, 06:25:28 pm
Yes, if you were to do that I would appreciate it.
Zekka, May 30, 2016, 06:33:09 pm
On it! Will return comments in via PM. Stay tuned!
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Do either of you want a close reading with comments on your script? I'd be happy to do that. I'm not a genius writer, so you'll have to take my comments with a heap of salt. I am thorough and I do consider myself an exceedingly good proofreader.
Nifty Nif, May 30, 2016, 06:25:28 pm
Yes, if you were to do that I would appreciate it.
Zekka, May 30, 2016, 06:33:09 pm
On it! Will return comments in via PM. Stay tuned!
Nifty Nif, May 30, 2016, 06:39:16 pm
By all means, I'd be glad to have feedback as well!
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Do either of you want a close reading with comments on your script? I'd be happy to do that. I'm not a genius writer, so you'll have to take my comments with a heap of salt. I am thorough and I do consider myself an exceedingly good proofreader.
Nifty Nif, May 30, 2016, 06:25:28 pm
Yes, if you were to do that I would appreciate it.
Zekka, May 30, 2016, 06:33:09 pm
On it! Will return comments in via PM. Stay tuned!
Nifty Nif, May 30, 2016, 06:39:16 pm
By all means, I'd be glad to have feedback as well!
Nikaer Drekin, May 30, 2016, 07:11:07 pm
Sure thing! Do you have a raw format I could work with? I won't manipulate your text, but it'll be easier for me to leave comments side-by-side. If not, I think I can leave comments on the PDF with Google Drive.
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Nif made major valid revisions to my draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IzCFr-IbCDk0SDlnC_KE2TSdosXuCd_L3HYtfgss6Xk/edit?pref=2&pli=1 .
I'm currently working on a second draft that should circumvent some of these problems.
E: Here's a slightly newer draft of a script that corrects some of those problems: http://lpaste.net/raw/8992496396275810304 . Estimated runtime is 5:15, so -- uh, edit fast?
E2: Made minor grammar edits and delivery edits to that version of the script. Pagliacci's monologue is longer.
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I am happy to read more scripts, and if anyone has a work in progress, I actually won't have time to get to any more until the weekend, and Zekka's second draft is first in my queue. Send me a PM if you have anything you'd like me to read, and I'll get to it on Sunday at the earliest. In essence: no rush!
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What's the status on this right now? Is there a timeframe for finishing the script? I would be happy to cast another pair of eyes on it.
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What's the status on this right now? Is there a timeframe for finishing the script? I would be happy to cast another pair of eyes on it.
AlbieQuirky, June 07, 2016, 12:40:09 am
I probably won't be able to actually start animating it until next month, which was an unfortunately inevitable delay. However, this also means you all have some extra time to make it even wor--err, better!
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What's the status on this right now? Is there a timeframe for finishing the script? I would be happy to cast another pair of eyes on it.
AlbieQuirky, June 07, 2016, 12:40:09 am
I was going to edit Zekka's second draft but I still haven't gotten around to it. You should look at it!
We still have 2 scripts with distinct plots and no others have been offered.
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Wow. This was actually something in the works? What happened that caused it to just... Stop?
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It's a lot of work for little reward, I guess.
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Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It just looked like it ground to a halt very, very abruptly.
But I guess one does have to consider they're putting more effort into something than the "creator" did. Well... I dunno. God Dozerfleet is weird. So much effort but in all the places that produce nothing.
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Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It just looked like it ground to a halt very, very abruptly.
But I guess one does have to consider they're putting more effort into something than the "creator" did. Well... I dunno. God Dozerfleet is weird. So much effort but in all the places that produce nothing.
Shell Game, July 13, 2017, 09:51:37 pm
I'm still down for it but my main stumbling block is that it's very hard to improve on the original. I know that sounds like a cornball joke but for me that's seriously what happened here. I mean sure, you could turn it into a circa 1990s Newgrounds Flash cartoon... but that still doesn't quite capture the nonsense of the initial concept and there are a lot of genuinely bad internet cartoons out there anyway. If there's some way to highlight the crazy without devolving into "hi I'm being ironic but it's so bad that you can't even tell" then I'm all ears! It just turned out to be a more difficult project to flesh out than I originally anticipated.
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Yeah, I have no idea where one would even begin. Adapting a creation of such a mind as the Dozerfleet founder's sounds like a daunting task from the onset.
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I dunno. I think maybe making the Stationery Voyager intro with like live action pens and quick cutting, like Kablam style, would be fun. <3 <3
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I'm still down for it but my main stumbling block is that it's very hard to improve on the original. I know that sounds like a cornball joke but for me that's seriously what happened here. I mean sure, you could turn it into a circa 1990s Newgrounds Flash cartoon... but that still doesn't quite capture the nonsense of the initial concept and there are a lot of genuinely bad internet cartoons out there anyway. If there's some way to highlight the crazy without devolving into "hi I'm being ironic but it's so bad that you can't even tell" then I'm all ears! It just turned out to be a more difficult project to flesh out than I originally anticipated.One Of The Crappy Pokemon That Nobody Likes, July 13, 2017, 10:03:15 pm
The obvious solution is to offer your animation services directly to The Dozerfleet Founder himself.