Silly Cartoons - what to do with them?

My daughter draws these little characters and I help them to speak with Crazy Talk. The thing is, I'm wondering what I could encourage, rather than just basic back and forth conversation for the sake of it. She's always drawing these things, so it would be good to put them to good use.

Here are the only two she's done so far. Any ideas on future projects for this sort of thing?

The Disco http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UGM5tcvKEU

The Dress http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW-98pemzJw&feature=channel&list=UL

I blame the parents...!

Quote: RedZed333 @ August 2 2012, 11:00 PM BST

I blame the parents...!

View original

Strangely...you're not the first person to have said that.

It was a good disguise but with the accent and the moustache I spotted
is was Hitler from the off. And why is there three when only two speak?
Or did I give up to soon? Amusing, nun-the-less

Absolutely spot on! Yes, only two speak in the first one because these are samples of conversation. Their 'names', according to my daughter are...'Plum', 'Goth Girl' and 'Boi'. Not my choice, but I'm used to them now!

Not sure if the silent blue one should have another accent or be all...um...'totes amaze balls'. However, not sure I want to go that way. My daughter's got another couple of little characters on the go...one is an old lady with a lot to say. I'm just curious to see what others would do with characters like these. It could be good practice for anyone needing to script something with no props and sets...as in...the dialogue has to count for everything.

When I get my floods of absolute winning free scripts I'll bung you some
to play with - no strings and no tampons either.

You mean...after I've filtered out and sent you all the shit...er...I mean best ones. Yes...that would be great!

Can you please stay on topic, try to keep the casual chit-chat to a minimum and concentrate on offering constructive criticism.

Thank you.

Those cartoons are really quite good, I don't recall seeing anything similar, good potential there, methinks...

Perhaps you could set up a little competition and ask BCGers to provide dialogue to one of your vids...

So would you join in? I've been talking to my daughter and we can't decide whether it would be best to mask four characters ready for action and ask people to speak for them, or just invite people to write a couple of minutes for consideration and then create the characters according to the script. Both ways have their own advantages I suppose.

We would post the finished item on YouTube and credit the writer, of course!

If it's possible I would suggested you make the shot less static by cutting back and fourth between each character as they speak. You could probably do this in Windows Movie Maker and it wouldn't be too hard to learn.

They're not bad. The voice acting flows without a problem. Much better than a lot of other YouTube videos out there attempting the same type of thing.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by encourage? Where did the dialogue come from these? Are you just making it as you go along? There's nothing wrong with that.

Yes...it's actually possible to pan and zoom too, but we kind of like the way you can see all the characters fluttering their eyes at the others. It's sort of trying not to be too adventurous and spoiling it by doing it badly, if you know what I mean. By 'encouraging' I mean steer her in a certain direction with her characters. At the moment, she draws for fun. I want to show her she could do far more with her imagination.

However, as already suggested, it would be really interesting to involved other people by inviting short scripts and limiting the amount of lines...thus limiting potential waffle. I play all the parts in these, but I know other people who like to do this sort of thing, so could, possibly, involve them too.

The dialogue was just spoken into a mic without a script and placed into the project. Eye and head movement is added afterwards to complement each line and accentuate delivery. It can be a bit time-consuming...another reason for a limit on lines.

Would it not be best to encourage your daughter to create the stories?

Just keep them simple and add a fun twist.

Without getting into learning proper animation, I'm not sure how much scope there is for static characters. The only thing you can really do is back and fourth chatter.

So you're saying...don't get anyone here involved?

Post a short animation and invite everyone to write a short script/sketch to add to it, your daughter can be the judge...

How old is she btw...?