Story, or the lack thereof

I’m approaching this animation in a pretty backwards way.  Usually, one starts with a script, creates boards from the script, and then finds an animation style that supports the story, themes, and style of the piece.

Since this was just a test, I haven’t really thought about any sort of story.  Now that I think it will work, I want to expand it into a few seconds of animation, so I need some sort of story.

One of the (few) things I like about advertising work is that it is often based on short bursts of visual flair.  Ads usually have some sort of story, but they just as often have mindless flashy graphics to draw your attention to a product or an end card.

So what is the story of the game I’m trying to represent?  There’s some crap about an evil doctor that creates robot masters, but not only would that take too long to get across, it’s a pretty sucky story.  As with the vast majority of games in the 8-bit era, the story is just a thin excuse for wanton robot murder.

I don’t want to reinvent the game and try to inject some story that doesn’t belong, so I’m going to let it be what it is, a representation of a few seconds of 8-bit game play in 3 dimensions.  He’ll run and jump across platforms, and shoot a couple of enemies.  I’ll do the 8-bit adaptation of Macbeth later.

So my “script” for this piece will be a 5-minute sketch-

I'm just gonna let the little guy do what he does best, move left to right.