30 June 2008

Drawing Inspiration

A homeless man is lying on a park bench with two cans of drink. He looks miserable. Noticing something taped underneath the bench, he finds a drawing of himself lying on the park bench with two cans of drink and looking miserable. The next day the man returns and finds another drawing, it is almost identical but this time includes a thought bubble which reads “What would I be without the drink?” The homeless man smiles and drinks. Returning once again the next day, the man is disappointed to find that there is no drawing.

He checks every day and for the next week there are no drawings. He grows thoughtful and spends a lot of time lying on the bench looking at the drawings. The next day the homeless man returns to the bench without any drink. He looks different. The man sits upright and looks about him, seeming to acknowledge the surroundings for the first time. He is approached by a child who speaks to him and shows off his football skills while the man watches and applauds. The boy passes him the ball but he shakes his head and passes it back awkwardly. The boy looks disappointed. In an attempt to redeem himself, the man does a coin trick. The little boy is amazed and runs off to tell his friends.

The next day the man returns looking smart; he finds a drawing taped underneath the bench. It is him performing the coin trick. The man smiles and looks around. He doesn’t have any drink with him. Later we see the boy once again showing off his football skills and passing the man the ball. This time the man laughs, pulls out a deck of cards and shuffles them effortlessly. Suddenly there is a group of children sitting cross legged on the floor, their eyes wide with excitement.

The next day the little boy comes to the bench but the man is not there. He notices something stuck to the bottom of the bench. It is a pack of cards.

The End

5 comments:

messytimbo said...

steve i really really like this! i read through it about three times, each time trying to visualize it and work out how it could be made into a film.

it's such a great and inspiring little story i'd love to see it made.

i think it would need a budget and a small team to produce it.

but there's a program you could apply for called AnimateTV 2009 and they're looking for Proposals. the deadline is soon, 31 july. there looking for 3 films to comission and the budgets are up to 20,000.

here's a link http://www.animateprojects.org/

i'd help with the proposal.

Steve Stamp said...

To be honest I thought of you after I had written it. It was supposed to be the beginning of something bigger but then I realised I had done so much without any dialogue that I might aswell go with that and have it as a visual thing which would be easier to produce.

Im in London next week so if you wanna meet up and talk about it I would be really excited about doing that. I had a look at that link and it looks like its focused very much on the animation side - if you have time to work on a little project I am bang on it and I will definitly help with some sketches or whatever I can do.

Let me know what you raekwon

messytimbo said...

yeah ding me when your about and were go and get a coffee somewhere and talk about it.

i think we should apply for that animate t.v thing coz if we were to get it we would get a budget. and i think we would need other people working on it so we need to pay them. also the kinda exposure we'd get would be dope and it would be on t.v

plus we'd have a year to make it! which i enought time to do things right!

Steve Stamp said...

Sounds good to me. What days are you free next week? I'm free any day after 4 oclock.

g1toons said...

just wanted to come by and say great job on the short