Story Premises and Rough Outlines

From here on out, the Dog character is now Melvin, and the Banana Peel character is now Slippy.  I also have a melon-headed antagonist which I will currently refer to as Melonhead, but may or may not decide on a different name for him later.

Melonhead lives with his grandmother, for whom he holds a great deal of respect.  He is very greedy, generally selfish, and thinks very highly of his ancestors (who according to his grandmother, ran a great, functional society many many years ago, on the same land where they live now.  In actuality, the Banana people had a beautiful kingdom on that land, which was moved when the place was overrun by greedy Melon people.  Without the Banana people around to keep things under control, the Melon people ended up running their society into the ground.  Grandma melon is too senile to remember this correctly: she thinks the Melon people's society was destroyed by a meteor covered in dinosaurs, and Melonhead believes her.)



I.   Marcel takes a meditative retreat out into the woods to enjoy the sites and sounds of mother nature, but his peaceful enjoyment is interrupted by the likes of Treezon, the rapping tree.

Rough Outline:

- Marcel is out relaxing in the woods
- Suddenly interrupted by blaring hip hop music
- Marcel wonders who would be out there partying, goes to check it out
- Ends up stumbling upon Treezon, the rapping tree, and his posse
- Marcel is intimidated by their urban sensibilities
- Marcel fails to gain their respect and is frightened away
- The Trees talked about heading over to a happening party
- Marcel accidentally discovers that the party is a trap set by Melonhead to cut the trees into wood, because he bought the forest property and wants to level the place.
- Marcel warns the trees about what's going to happen, and the trees team up against Melonhead to scare him away forever.


II.  While playing around in and outside Marcel's house, Slippy ends up throwing a frog at the moon and destroying it, which ends up throwing the Earth into chaos.  Marcel, Melvin, and Slippy must venture into the Banana Kingdom and make an appeal to the Banana Queen to ask for her spare moon as a replacement.

Rough Outline:

- Slippy is playing around the house
- Ends up throwing frogs at things (perhaps a popular past-time for bananas?)
- Slippy throws a frog at the moon and explodes it.
- With no moon, disasters begin to happen, ranging from likely things like tidal waves, to less likely things, such as spontaneous explosions/fires, quicksand storms, and rabid hyena attacks
- Marcel and Melvin confront Slippy, to find out what's going on; Slippy admits to getting carried away and destroying the moon.
- Slippy mentions that the Queen Banana actually has an exact replica of the moon that she might be willing to spare, but he's technically not allowed re-entry into the Banana Kingdom because he was exiled for doing similar things there.
- Marcel and Melvin agree to accompany Slippy into the Banana Kingdom to make an appeal to the Queen for her extra moon.
- The three must pass a test to earn the moon.
- They pass the test and the moon is tossed into orbit - everything returns to normal, supposedly.


III.  Melvin's owner kicks him out of the house for not training to be a doctor like his elder brother did, so he heads out with Marcel to go house hunting.  One of the houses they enter, at first an attractive option, ends up being a dangerous monster which traps them all inside.

Rough Outline:

- Melvin's owner scolds him for not trying to be a doctor, calls him a bum, compares him to his successful doctor "brother" (just another dog he owns, not blood-related.)  Melvin just wants to be an artist
- Owner kicks Melvin out of the house.
-Melvin meets up with Marcel, who provides Melvin with shelter and offers to help him hunt for a new place to live for very cheap.
-They go house hunting (Slippy tags along, too.)
-A few houses are very unattractive offers
-They stumble across a rather appealing offer, take a tour of the place (too good to be true.)
-All the doors lock, and they are stuck.  They are informed that they have been trapped and their souls will be digested as food for the house.
-The crew is forced to find an escape, which leads through a perilous dungeon.
-They end up making it out okay, but the house chases them as they drive off.
-After a brief car chase, they run the house off the road and it explodes
-Melvin's owner misses his company and decides to let him move back in, as long as he gets a job.

IV.  Melonhead trains his pet shark to find and attack bananas.  When the shark catches on to Slippy, it ends up on a wild chase that ends up tearing Marcel's home to shreds.

Rough Outline:




V.  When the city votes to display Marcel and Melvin's environmental friendly sculpture art over Melonhead's noisy, animatronic statue idolizing his dearly beloved grandmother, Melonhead attempts to sabotage their community art piece.

Rough Outline:

Assignment #2

I have discovered three main characters, so far:

I have a few secondary characters so far, too, but I have not put a lot of time into their designs yet.  I look forward to posting them up, later. So far I have:

Treezon:  A rapping tree who enjoys intimidating others, and has a rather large ego, but may actually be a decent guy buried behind his successful rap star persona.

The Queen Banana:   Ruler of the Magic Banana Kingdom, a magical world which few people know of.  It can only be accessed via a portal.

The Elder Bananas:  They serve the Queen.

The Dog's Master:  A father figure to the Dog character, but he is very authoritative and structured.  He loves his dog but is hesitant to let him go out on his own, and wants to be involved in all of the decisions he makes.  Career-wise, he'd like the Dog to make a lot of money as a doctor.

I don't have a primary antagonist at the moment.  I feel that I should have one, and that it would benefit my series.

Here are my story premises.  I only have three so far.  I feel that my lack of a main antagonist is making it difficult for me to set up interesting conflicts.  Also I need to put more time into building the kind of world my characters live in, since I have mostly focused on the characters themselves so far:

1.  Marcel goes to the forest to relax and enjoy the beauty of nature, but his tranquil meditative retreat is interrupted by blaring hip hop music from the likes of Treezon the rapping tree, and his posse.  Marcel loves trees, but he has trouble dealing with these insensitive brutes.

2.  Marcel and the Dog go house hunting after the Dog's master kicks him out for not having a job or going to school.

3.  The Banana Peel accidentally destroys the moon, throwing the Earth into chaos.  He has to make an appeal to the Banana Queen to rectify his error, with help from Marcel and the Dog.

Assignment #1 - Doodlings

Last month, while I was developing several cartoon drawings to add into my college admissions portfolio, I found myself going back to old sketchbook doodles and using those ideas to create more refined characters, and then putting them into brief snippets of narrative where they were able to interact with one another.  If you're interested, the results of that can be seen at my other blog, here:  http://concreterabbit.blogspot.com/2011/01/cartoon-book-scans.html

When I began this first assignment, I decided I wanted to try creating some brand new characters, in addition to the possibility of further exploring characters I had already began building in December.  Below are a few collages of my favorite doodlings from this week:

And this one's from December, but I feel like I should post it here for the sake of further context, since it includes a couple of the characters I might like to work with...

Though I honestly have a little bit of trouble reproducing that tree character, correctly.  I still have to find out what makes him work.

I have every intention to continue these doodles over the weekend, as well.