#anyway their name is Qubchee :)

[kathybluecaller]

👀

[kathybluecaller]

The submitted version of Smile Force that landed me and @flannagus , as well as two other friends, 5th place for a national competition!!

This initial cut was rather rushed and unfortunately doesn’t contain audio (the song we originally intended to use would have violated the copyright rules and none of use wanted to be disqualified so we ditched it and hoped for the best)

A simple summary of the plot: In a world where three spirits run around wrecking havoc a group of mascots come in to save the day! The villains target adults and through putting them in a bad mood upset the children. Smile Force, consisting of Qubchee (cheese porcupine drummer), Oliver S. Stonks (account bird sax player), Roland Buck (horse plumber guitarist), and Vickey Buck (horse plumber keytarist), make it their sole mission to combat the forces of evil using their musical based powers and bring back the much needed good mood.

Behind the scenes stuff: The prompt we were given was superheroes but figured going with typical powers/appearance would blend in with other submissions. So instead we took inspiration from Twrp and Japanese mascots cause why not. I had already competed to some degree before and humor seems to go a long way so any silly idea was a good idea. Japanese mascots are what inspired the character designs, it helped with standing out as they wouldn’t be human, the silliness came from the fact that often Japanese mascots have rather odd combinations/roles.

A major influence was Nyango Starr, who is an apple possessed by a dead cat who plays heavy metal drums. That seemed absurd enough for a character and had the added bonus of inspiring us to give the characters music based powers. (there’s also this one futon song Nyango Starr plays that inspired the initial idea of lullaby rock song. The thought of Dragon Force music centered for kids is what made us name the hero gang Smile Force: Guardians of Laughter. The look on my friends faces when I told them the other half of the team name is a Twrp reference🤣)

Twrp lore inspired the whole fighting off dastardly haters (sworn enemies of the fun who are bent on hatering them and ungroovifying the world at large). Since the heroes would be fighting for the happiness of the children of the world we initially thought of the villains to be adults kids normally wouldn’t like. A mean teacher, a dentist, your mom. We later came to realize three random people wouldn’t really have that much of an impact on a what is in universe a global scale. So the villains then evolved into The Specters who go by Yo-kai Watch logic, basically they consist of three emotions, Anger, Sadness, and Disappointment, and by slapping a mask onto an adult pass on that negative emotion.

Back to the heroes them being mascots is rather funny to me if this were to be expanded. In universe everyone thinks it’s just some guy in costume but no that is a literal cartoon horse with a magic keytar. Anyway Qubchee came to be because flannagus suggested a porcupine while I was eating an absurd amount of cheese. The character was given the drums just cause(?) not much to it. We had a list of instruments and animals we wanted to use and one of them was a triangle. It would have originally been given to a horse mascot and be beyond overpowered (the scene I had in my head was basically with a single strike destroy a universe levels of power). The reason behind any of this was because of that one dummer that plays the buckets in the bathtub with a horse head on (horse percussionist) we already had a percussionist so we let go of the idea. I did want a pair of sorts because of Chiitan and Shinjo-kun (it’s so funny to me seeing Chiitan on the blue bird app after all this) going with otters seemed to much of a direct inspiration so instead we went back to horses. An early suggestion from a teacher was giving them everyday jobs since you know, they’re mascots, so that’s how the horse twin plumbers came to be (later people would point out ‘like Mario and Luigi?’ and while no I did think it’d be funny if they stared at the camera while fixing a sink) for the instrument by now we had 1 standard instrument and 1 not as much (the saxophone). To keep it even we gave Roland Buck (the brother) a guitar and Vickey Buck (the sister) a keytar

(the twrp references are always there)

btw Roland got his name from the Roland Ax-Synth (what inspired the design of Vickey’s keytar +the Casio AZ-1) while Vickey got her name from what inspired Roland’s guitar (the Flying V). Lastly there’s Oliver S. Stonks who was created while I was storyboarding. We had thought of making one of the members have a saxophone and I really wanted to have a bird character. The same teacher who had suggested plumber also brought up an office worker. With that my 10pm brain thought it’d be funny to make Oliver a tired accountant (because of my aunt). I had given them the tired look but a friend drew they’re version of Oliver with the swirl glasses and so we went with their everyday appearance having the glasses and then taking them off when fighting.

Visual development: Once we had the story and characters we had to figure out how the heck this was going to look like. I struggled with this a lot pushing it back till the very end (and unfortunately doing the entire production phase two weeks before the deadline. note to self never do that again). Trying to tie it all together and prioritizing our main goal of this being a childlike wonder, I landed on making it appear as though a kid had made this. That at home feel was created by using cheap material (literally every physically drawn background is crayola to some degree) some were more simple and was a plan scrap book paper sheet. A lot of notebook paper was used as well. Shots with what was meant to be comic panels were cut out black card stock. My favorite background(s) was the colorful ones used for the transformation scene. It was a bunch of cut out transparent sticky notes

I bit of a node to the album cover(?) of the song we didn’t end up using (Get A Ban Ban, the Japanese opening to one of the Pokémon XY seasons)

The entire mixed media idea came by complete accident/exploration. It was winter break, I was still finishing up the storyboard, I had a single page outline, and unfortunately got the good ol’ art block. Watching Evangelion got me in the mood to animate traditionally and one Strive animation wip later I decided the initial first cut would be done on paper (had my light pad underneath and a text book with a nice pattern)

Early on I had planned the last shot to close like a book Spider-Verse style and after viewing this whole thing as something a kid did for fun I finished off the short exactly like that. The fade into a physical object that was stop motioned to give that whole ‘we’ve just left the imaginary world’ and the pages that flip through the end are a panel for panel retelling of the events in the short. To add to it ‘Guardians’ was totally misspelled to seem like a kid wrote it (and definitely not because I was speed writing at 2am ._.) Anyway it is now currently 2am and I shall continue may rambles at another time (I do however have a little bonus)

Random stuff: Qubchee is the only one without a proper transformation, instead of a different outfit they’re sudden expressiveness contrasts they’re usually blank face so much everyone is like ‘yeah that’s totally someone else’. It wasn’t till getting ready for the national event that we brought up the fact I had never really given any of them genders(?) The only one I had confirmed in my head was Vickey being a girl and that’s about it. Roland I see as a guy and honestly Oliver gives me non binary vibes. To quote my friend ‘well they are colorful’ (they are all queer your honor) Qubchee I genuinely don’t know that’s just a lil blorbo (pats them on the head) Their names came about through a conversation with my siblings while on a car ride back home. It was fun :] Vickey has infinite pocket space and uses her tools (typically the wrench) and moves it around with her music (inspired by the brooms/mops that move around in Fantasia) expanding on her naming coming from that of the Flying V I figured she’d also have that as a nickname as I see her doing this one trick from the Daicon IV film (but with a wrench instead of a sword)

We had planned as part of the booth during the national showcase to have a cereal box prop to give the whole Saturday morning cartoon vibe (Oliver eats all the cereal in the comic on the back) and we were going to make a whole physical copy of the short, burn it on a dvd with a menu and everything, but umm… the digital nightmare struck

I will most definitely continue this project to some degree (and touch up the short and release what I guess you could call the directors cut) if your still reading thank you :] (lemme know what you think about it cause I still got loads to say👀)

(also sorry for any spelling mistakes/straight up not making sense cause again its 2am)