I was on Kickstarter.com over the weekend looking for a friend of mines pitch for his new stop-motion animation about a frog. While searching through all the different pitches to not find my friends, I decided to watch some (almost all) of the video pitches for the animation category only. And wow. Now most of the people did have great ideas that will work but there were a few that sparked the inspiration for this episode of the blog.
This is the first part to a I don't know how many part series about cartoon worlds and the basics. In this part we are going to discuss the physical locations in a cartoon world and how they should work with your characters, storytelling and everything else in your cartoon. For the most part, this map of your world is an intricate part of a successful cartoon and a thriving cartoon world. There are a few good books out there on this subject but I'm going to tell you things I've learned through reading and my own trials and tribulations in creating a quality cartoon.
This article assumes that you already have that great story with awesome characters and now you need the world they can move around in. Location. Location. Location. is a great place to start. You need to decide where each of your characters resides. Simplicity is a key, so try and keep the amount of main locations that are actually used in the cartoon to a minimum. For example, in the good ole world of SpongeBob they don't have tons of places . Patrick has his rock. SpongeBob has his pineapple. Squidward has his home.Mr. Crabs has the Crabby Patty and Plankton has the Chum Bucket. That's five places. Five places. See how keeping it simple makes the cartoon easier to understand for the massive amount of kids or people that are going to be watching your cartoon. Right? Well, not if you have too many locations in your cartoon. Having too many locations in your cartoon world will only make your cartoon harder to understand. There are exceptions to this rule however, like everything else in this world. Sometimes, in fantasy or sci-fi cartoons you may have a lot of locations, depending on how deep your story goes. For example, the Lord of the Rings has many locations in its stories but we have to remember that it was a book first and it wasn't some guy trying to create a cartoon for a TV show on cartoon network. Also, when it comes to a cartoon like Scooby-Doo where every episode happens at a different ghostly locale. This is not the type of world I am talking about and obviously you should stop reading the rest of this article now. I'm joking keep reading and I'm sure you will get some small piece of information to take home to your mom.
Ok down to business, I'm going to use 'The Dog, Bird, Bear, Cat Show' for an example because it has that good old school recipe of characters and locations. So now that I am supplied with these four or so characters There are a couple questions you want to ask yourself about each character. First of all, where do they spend most of their time and how does that location affect the other people, places or things in your cartoon world. Lets say that for now, that the Dog lives in a dog house. Wow! So exciting. And the Cat lives in a house. Holy Crap! This cannot be true. The Bird lives in a bird house. The world is about to end. And the Bear lives in a cave. I can't believe I just created this cartoon that no one has ever thought of. I'm going to be rich. screw this blog stuff...I'm joking. Lets take those four locations and draw them on a piece of paper or maybe just use text for right now but anyway you should end up with something like this.
Hopefully you draw yours with some style and make them look the way you want but for this example I just threw these down real quick. Once you have put your locations on the paper. Take a closer look on how these places need to interact with the other places on your map. Does the dog house need to be closer to the house because the Cat makes funny faces at the dog through the house window? Does the bird house need to be on top of the house because of the Bear? These are the things you need to consider when making your cartoon world. How does the Cat get out of the house? How does the Cat sneak up to the Dog? How did the bear meet the bird? I can keep going but you get the idea. Now, even though we have designated this as our cartoon world doesn't mean you can't have an episode at another location like the grocery store. Work on establishing these main map areas in your episodes before you start running away from known areas. Keep everything simple and that way everyone knows where everything is. On Kickstarter.com I saw a few animation pitches that had around 20 characters with about 20 different locations and they never really established the main map area. People will like your cartoon more if you make sure that you keep everything simple. I can't say that enough. Now don't get so simple that you get cliche like the example map above. No one wants to see the same old dog and cat show that they have seen a thousand times. Be original and come up with new ideas for your characters. Maybe the dog is a car mechanic? Maybe the cat works in a hair salon? These are all things you need to decide to make your cartoon different and interesting to the seasoned cartoon executive. Well it didn't think I was going to be typing this long but I have more to say and I will be posting more information regarding maps and the cartoon world. Gotta go out with my friends to eat so I will catch you back here to finish up reading the last part of this article. Thanks for your support people and have a great day!
