As those who were there today know, the instructors did not take kindly to the Death concept.
Unfortunately that is no little change, as a lot of elements of the story fall apart with out it.
I've been re-thinking the story and trying to find a different approach, and here's what i've come up with:
The characters are vikings. The husband is an extremely brutish "force solves everything" personality. He is an over the top, intense, physical character. His wife is calm, quiet, laid back, and artisitic. She knits alot and is all about finesse and finding the most creative and interesting way to accomplish things. This will achieve a contrast in living styles and personalities that will be interesting and entertaining to play with both in vis dev and in animation. Throughout the book he will approach every task and action with an extreme force blunt solution, even when a simple solution is obvious. He doesn't open doors, he busts through them. He doesn't sit and churn butter, he attacks it as if wrestling a beast. This will make for a variety of funny gags, and fits the ADHD sort of personality that the husband in the story seems to have.
I have a few other ideas, but this is the best one so far and it retains much of the stuff that the instructors did like about the original idea (i.e. the odd couple relationship and the physical humor). Also it's an interesting setting and appropriate to the location that the story came from (Norway). If you have any thoughts or concerns about this please voice them asap. Otherwise I will begin boarding a little later in the day.
I really liked the dynamic of the death/life relationship. I think the wife can still be bubbly and the husband can still be a dealer of death, as vikings are wont to be. I wonder if this can take place in Valhalla or work that in somehow, that would be cool and make the story more 'geographically' specific.
ReplyDeleteOh! What if the wife went out to loot and pillage, since that's clearly the husband's job? And while he's churning butter or something, we can see her out the window, in the distance, chasing people with a shield and a double-blade axe or whatever.
In this case, I think it would be funny if the house (wife's domain) was completely decorated in frilly, elaborate Norse decor with the brutish husband completely out of place in whatever he attempts to do: his environment almost prevents him from doing these simple tasks which, of course, frustrates him endlessly. This would be the reverse of death's house which was predominantly dark, and the wife was the contrasting accent element.
Another thing I thought (which I don't like that much, but, just brainstorming) was they could be on a house boat, and everything takes place either on the big, dragon-headed boat, or in the bay or channel or some maritime body.
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ReplyDeleteJust another brainstorm: they could be a Norse god and goddess and 'raise the stakes' as it were. He's churning ambrosia, he spills the stellar barrel of nectar, his cow is a mythological beast, etc. (I know that those are disparate mythologies, but you get the idea.) All of his "domestic" mistakes could effect the mortals below, or around him, somehow. He's churning The Butter of the Seasons and, when it spills, people's crops dry up or something. He burning the Porridge of Life.
ReplyDeleteI agree completely about the death/life relationship and making the wife still be really bubbly. I also really like the idea of being able to see the wife wrecking havok in the background through out the story.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be hard to make it clear that it was Valhalla without changing any of the words, and the boat is a cool setting, but I think we'll have to force some of the elements into it, like the cow, that wouldn't be as rough a fit on a land based setting. Besides which, I think that having the house be maintained by a bubbly woman always looking to decorate the house in a wierd way offers plenty of interesting design choices. After all, in this interpretation a lot of the reason that he's so mad at the beginning is because she's gone so over the top with the strange bubbly norse decor. We can also bring in a lot of norse mythological elements through her bizzare decorations.
Similarly, though I think the God and Goddess idea is cool, I think that it will be difficult to do effectively on this project seeing as how we are not allowed to change or add to the wording of the text. Also, it widens the scope a bit, and I think this story would be served best focusing on just the couple and mostly on his interaction with her world.
These are a lot of good ideas though, and I'll use several of them as I board. Thanks for contributing!
I am worried that it will be a wasted week if we completely change the story and not just do the simple change that the professors advised. I don't want to come in friday with a different idea and have them upset that we didn't take their advice and then tell us to do something else again. I mean they said everything sounds great, just make death a gloomy, fatalist human character, and to even think of the character as death while we develop him. They stressed about that being more "real" and "relatable", and changing the characters into gods or whatever might make them think we did not take this into account at all. Just my thoughts! I am totally open to any changes, I just wanted to throw that out there.
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