Rags To Riches

 

Here's something big I've been working on lately. My creativity has been improving and I'm coming up with new ideas almost every single time I experience something new, and it's working. 

I'm sure everyone who's a fan of this blog knows that I'm not into animated shorts anymore. But what settled this into existing in the first place is this random Color Rhapsody called Lucky Pigs (1939). I remember watching this film but barely remember a thing about it, but I do like this idea of a rich pig family, it's just that 7 minutes was short for this premise to work. When I was caught with The Three Stooges, and feature length movies, I could understand more depth and structure to them.

Cartoons interested me in ways I never thought would be in real scenarios whatsoever, which is why I believe that younger audiences are appealed to fictional characters more than typical human interactions. I mean I wasn't a "cartoon" kid. I liked Seinfeld, and Malcolm In The Middle, but I did like more imaginative and interesting franchises. 

The first obvious principle is the characters. At first, I was just sketching a bunch of pigs with specific live acting. I also tried to simply create the characters as distinctive as possible. That means their faces should be different. Characters like The Lost Boys from Peter Pan, as much as I like them, don't have unique likeabilty to each of their designs. All of them have the same facial features. 

The title is based off another cartoon I grew up with called Wags To Riches. I didn't knew that this cartoon was supposedly a pun to "Rags To Riches". I thought it would be the decent title. 

This is some of the other characters.

 

As much as I trust and respect other people and their differences and cultures, it's upsetting that people are only excepting things to be white-washed and re-written completely. I researched into different types of pigs so I wouldn't draw the same typical pink pig. Lil' River, is a Kunekune. Notice his black patches. Olly is a black pig, and yes I had to search if there was and to be honest it's kinda cool. And finally the last unique character I made is Charlie Sprout, whom is legally blind. He serves as the helping hand for Jack Marson.

This is our main antagonist. Mayor Machfield. He's the ultimate convict of greed, isolation and selfishness. We're supposed to feel discouraged for his actions. As he thinks that money is the only way for him to be secured and protected. 

You'll notice that I already created quotes already for Machfield to say.

As he rips his suit to shreds, he realizes what his other authoritarian members have to say about his wealthy ego. This makes him finally say something gullible and informative. 

Machfield - "If you really think that it isn't the only important thing in life, then what is there to not lose?"

He consists a statue of a piggy bank with a sinful smile. Filled with all his promises with coins and hard cash. 

I like a little villain backstory sometimes. I wished more films could have this. Machfield explains what made him overly driven to only concentrate on quantity and finances. His overly selfish and doubtful personality started when he got his official job as mayor. His supposed action is to act exactly like his preferable occupation, and he doesn't succeed by being isolated and secretive. His sustainability has been described as unimpressive and keeps trying to ban certain cash shortages like the penny as it was heavily inspired by the discontinuation of pennies that happened this year while also terminating nickels, dimes, and quarters. 

If more temperamental and overly excessive, he loses almost everything he has.

I still believe that animation should aim at an audience that relates to real-life or moral values. Such as one of my inspirations in art mediums like animation and old movies. Obviously I have a different taste to these films. Some people like them because of the nostalgia, and performance. To me I'm an old soul. I like to gain knowledge from deeper understandings so the films I usually watch often involve more maturity and sense. 

Machfield is sorta a resemblance of grouchy, rough elderly characters. Angus MacBadger from Disney's Wind In The Willows, while he turns out to be a good character, he shows off as rather busy and annoyed at the start.

I absolutely enjoy the acting and story-telling from the Disney movies. And to me the old hollywood movies from the 30s-50s do the same, except there's more incredibly fun dialogue and acting. 

Machfield is also like Mr. Potter from It's A Wonderful Life, which is my favorite film, in fact I've been studying and visiting Frank Capra's films nowadays, and the cast of characters in his movies are absolutely memorable and realistic. I went to the flea market today and bought more of his films on DVD like Mr. Deed Goes To Town, Meet John Doe, and Lost Horizon.

I'm still kinda on my phase of musicals being added, but reasons why it's because they have good energy to them. I think 1-3 songs is perfectly fine for a movie to have.

My idea was to have a complete nightmare involving Machfield sleeping in his court house because he owns the entire place. It's run by the Sahara Desert tribe.

I've seen this sad trope happen in a couple of films and TV shows whereas someone who's terribly exhausted suffers from the dry desert looking for water for hydration. I find it horrible, but it can be done decently in fictional circumstances. I seen Road to Morocco and Disney's Crazy With The Heat with a similar gag involving dreaming and visioning food and drinks in their path.

This only resulted into serious territory as I added a severe leader who speaks out consequences to Machfield's avarice. The song is Pig In A Penalty, it's upbeat but dark and disturbing as the other pigs start dancing.

This is a jumbled list of references to use for this music segment. The leader's name is officially Okoka, and there are a total of 30 members, but I only drew 14 distinctive faces for each of the sahara tribe. 

Next is Senator Beckham Madley who is secretly friends with Machfield, but also has his own deeper thinking into subjects. However being more honest and responsible than Machfield, has more higher standards. 

His assistants Arnell and Mack Bacon.

And here's The Marson couple. Jack and Amelia.

It's hard to make the somewhat decent wife personality work well, since I want Amelia herself to progress throughout the film. She although does have a good design.

I think what makes Amelia more interesting than other female leads is that she's supportive, which is already a very inspiring and genuinely good trait to describe her personality.

Like I was saying, this is just for a draft project. I'll come up with more ideas and characters.

Gee whiz, this was the longest, hardest post I done so far. Hoped you enjoyed this one. 😆