Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Treatment - Main Story & Story Ideas - Chad Ruger

(So this is a little long...)

Idea 1 -

A technologically minded man lives on a post cataclysmic earth. 20 years after the event, it is only known that the world broke into two halves, and that travel between halves is impossible due to a mysterious electrical storm originating from the chasm. The man is trying to get back to the other half where he believes his family to still be alive.

Idea 2 -

Two Knights Templar (A young knight and his mentor) are struggling to move their local chapter's goods out of the country before the French Monarchy turns on them. They are caught in an alleyway between soldiers but just as they are about to lose the fight, they disappear. They find themselves in a futuristic building and are recruited into the New Order of Knights Templar. The scientists explain to them that the younger Templar is renowned to be one of the greatest fighters to have ever existed. He explains they have the wrong guy, but as he completes missions for this futuristic faction, he hones his skills and becomes unmatched, learning to use new technological weapons and classic ones. At the end he is sent back to his time, and lives on to become the legend that the records claimed him to be when he first went to the future.

Idea 3 -

A secret society has been charged with containing an evil force within their dreams. There is always one who sleeps to keep the dream going. When it is time to relieve the person, another comes, links hands and is "taken" by the dream. The other only wakes up when it is safe to leave the dream world. While dreaming, the dreamers posses god-like powers, and must use creativity to combat the evil. Although they are fighting a never ending battle, the evil force changes the conflict at seemingly random intervals with the conflicts ranging from serious things (war, combat, plague, etc.) to more abstract and silly things (political debate, world forming, video gaming, mazes, sporting events, etc.). This society must continually recruit as it is possible for a person to die while sleeping.

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Story:
The world is broken in half and divided by a cataclysmic energy storm filled chasm and a small brotherhood of men (an one woman) is formed, called the Apprentices, to control the secrets of the potentially destructive technology that was invented to cross the chasm. One Apprentice is known as the Preacher because he embraces beliefs from pre-cataclysmic religions and is confronted by a young woman who needs to cross the chasm because she has "heard" that the doctor who can save her child is on the other side. The Apprentices have strict creeds of neutrality and the woman cannot pay for passage across the chasm, creating conflict between his ideals of charity and his strict brotherhood code of conduct. He must choose between two conflicting "goods" and eventually ferries the woman and her child across because of conversations about her faith in the fact that there is a doctor over there who can fix her problems. He continues on as if the event never happened, telling the woman to never speak of this favoritism, and returns to his post.

3 Panel:

9 comments:

  1. Wow, this is the beginning of a really interesting story. Hats off to pushing the level of difficulty on this. Good pressure on your self. I immediately want to be prescriptive in my discussion about your idea, but i think that if we, as a class, start to tell you how to tell your story instead of being good listeners, and through that be the ones to ask you the critical questions, then this class will be just like every other class you share ideas in (not productive).

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  2. There really is no way to cross the storm--you end up on the other side of the world.

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  3. What if whatever event split the Earth wiped out a lot of the population on Earth, so even living is difficult since there aren't convenient things like stores and stuff. Everyone is struggling to get back on their feet so people can either be very helpful and kind or they can be really mean as they try and fend for themselves.

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  4. When you die in the dreaming, your consciousness and even your identity is absorbed by the evil force and can be used against the other team people.

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  5. If someone breaks hands with the other with whom they're dream sharing they risk losing their minds to the dream world. Perhaps the evil force will find a way to force its way into one's body whose mind is lost.

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  6. Templar Hero Guy - while in the future, he can only learn and excel in things he is legendary for.

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  7. How does the dreamer know if someone is holding their hand? The second dreamer has to create a gateway for the other dreamer to walk through. When the gateway has been walked through the dreamers know it is safe to wake up.
    The Templars time hole can only be travelled through once each way.

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  8. Evil in the individuals get absorbed into the original evil.

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  9. Can you account for: Use of reference place? Use of text in at least one panel?
    While your pacing and use of figure/ground design is easy to read, your motorcycle, cliff formation, and clouds lack 1) that sense of illusion of life, and 2) don't make full use of adding visual meaning to your story (i.e, more detail on motorcycle could give us a hint on the state of technology in your world, the chasm and clouds lacks any sort of dramatic sci-fi element that should prevail in your story, etc.).
    I'd like to email you reference to explain better but first it'd be nice to know what kind of style you are after. What other artists would be in your family of style?
    Also, the last 2 panels. I would suggest you either keep the 3rd panel and then try in the 4th panel for an over-the-shoulder shot of the chasm; or keep the 4th panel composition and change the 3rd panel so that we get the shoes and chasm-depth but at an angle that is not your character's POV.

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