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The Chaos Blog ~ Introduction

Devin Grover
Sep 3, 20235 min read

Note: Everything in this blog post is similar, if not the exact same as what will be present on the official proposal document.


The Elevator Pitch


The Chaos Clover is a surrealist comedy about a man's quest for a supposed all-encompassing problem solver within a four leaf clover. However, he ultimately discovers that such a prospect does not exist, and isn’t a healthy way to approach life.



Meet The Team


- Devin Grover (Director & Lead Animator)


- Jack Digrigoli (Assistant Animator & Colorist)


- Lily Cantillo (Assistant Animator & Colorist)


- Kyle DeWitt (Background Artist)


- Austin Kephart (Composer)


- Shannon King (Sound Designer)


- Uncle Al (Voice Actor)

Known for: Hugh Neutron


... and more to come!


Concept Art & Thumbnails


"""""Color Script""""" (Very Loose Definition)



Treatment *Currently a work in progress


Declan, a down-on-his-luck guy, wakes up one morning to the sensation of dripping water from a leaky ceiling on his balding head. He rubs his eyes, wipes his forehead, and gets up. While getting dressed, he absentmindedly puts on a sock with a big hole in it. He tries to greet his pet sheep good morning, but the sheep is apathetic toward him at best and almost never leaves his room. As he sits down to eat breakfast, a newspaper comes crashing through the window, hitting him on the head.


In an attempt to remedy his misfortunes, Declan turns to his collection of flowerpots, each labeled with a child-like drawing of a clover. As he begins watering them, he starts singing a whimsical, hopeful musical number about how a lucky four-leaf clover would magically resolve all his problems.


During the song, the pot starts rattling, and out blooms a four-leaf clover. When Declan finishes his song and sees what just bloomed, he is filled with a sense of wonder and excitement. Now all he needs to do is see if magic really works. However, it just so happens that at this very moment, the pet sheep smells something. What is it? Well, as the sheep looks over, he discovers that it’s Declan’s four-leaf clover, or from his perspective, food! The sheep leaves its room and starts walking towards his lunch. However, Declan sees the sheep out of his room and is elated. The sheep finally left his room! The clover must be truly magic! However, Declan clearly misses the fact that the sheep leaving had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the fact that a clover is sheep food.


With the power of confirmation bias, Declan tries to use the clover to repair other problems in his life. However, he’s ultimately solving nothing and, in fact, is probably making things worse. He is unaware of how little he’s accomplishing, as he’s too swept up in his giddiness to notice.


Water drops on him once more, reminding him of his leaky ceiling issue. Declan decides to put the "magic" clover to use and attempts to “repair” the leaky ceiling. His efforts only resulted in the inside of his house being utterly destroyed, as not properly fixing the pipes caused them to burst and flood the house. Frustrated and overwhelmed, he looks towards his once-precious clover. How could the clover have done this to him? It was supposed to magically fix everything, and all it did was make things worse. Declan snaps and brutally murders the clover in cold blood, mashing it until it’s nothing but green flakes on the floor.


As he kneels down and starts sobbing over what just transpired, the leaky pipe drips on him once more. In a last-ditch effort, he angrily grabs a roll of duct tape and a wrench to cover up the pipe. After Declan’s rage subsides, he’s somewhat shocked to see that the pipe has stopped leaking. Filled with adrenaline from this small victory, he starts addressing his other issues practically, without relying on supposed magical fixes.


During this pursuit, he notices the door to his pet sheep’s room, which gives him an idea. The sheep hears a knock on his door. He opens it to find Declan with a repaired four-leaf clover, which he then feeds to his pet sheep. After this kind gesture, the sheep decides to pitch in and help clean up the house and help solve Declan’s problems.


The camera zooms out as Declan and the sheep happily continue this positive, progressive rampage. He has learned that true happiness comes from properly acknowledging your problems, taking responsibility, and taking decisive action.



Timeline



Excerpts from the Master Guide


There currently exists a 23+ page document detailing every visual and audio aspect of the production, which can be found here. For the sake of brevity, here are some of the highlights!


Animation

  • Some scenes, particularly when Declan is having extreme emotions, the line thickness and style will change. At his happiest, the line weight is 6px. At his most depressed, the line weight is 25px and has a fairly-odd parents style thick border. 15px tends to be the average.

  • That's not all, the way Declan is animated will change depending on his current emotional state!



When Declan is happy, the animation becomes more bouncy and fluid. While form is still kept, this style of animation would be less reliant on model sheets.




Whereas when Declan is feeling depressed and stuck in his life, he's animated much more rigidly. Model sheets will be followed during these moments religiously to make Declan feel intentionally stilted.




Backgrounds

  • That's not all, the background color palette will also change depending on Declan's emotional state!

When Declan is happy, the backgrounds will be warm, saturated colors!










When he's angry and/or depressed, the color palette turns to a more sinister cooler colors.








Music

  • You thought we were done? Think again! The music will also change depending on Declan's emotions.

The plan for the music is still a work in progress, but the idea is interesting. The brief musical segment will be the ONLY song recorded for the film. After that, that single song will be warped and edited in post to replicate Declan's fading enthusiasm. We can splice it, distort it, pitch shift, reverse, the works.


If that still doesn't make sense, imagine the "original score" is the first video, while the "distorted version" is beneath it. Same exact piece of audio, but it was radically altered to give off a different emotion

"Original Score" Example

"Distortion" Example


  • Speaking of the music number segment, to put fears away asap, this section is going to be 45 seconds MAX which is barely a divot in the film's planned run time. That may sound short, but believe me it's more than enough time for a musical number. That actually tends to be the average musical runtime in a lot of TV shows. If Family Guy can have a song that short while still sounding complete, then so can we! A demo track has been created, however it's still going under a lot of revision so please don't think it's anything final.


Compositing

  • Compositing also plays a role in this film. I have been experimenting for years to make animation look as close to the 90's cel VHS look as possible, and I believe I finally found out how! The rules of how to make this look are in the Master Guide.


  • Now, why do that for this film? Well one, it's an aesthetic that I am very fond of. In terms of serving this film, it contributes to the themes of imperfection. Think about it, the most notable thing about VHS 90's animation style is it's imperfections! So it really only makes sense for that to be the compositing style for a film all about how there's no such thing as a perfect solution.


Example of what I'm going for with the compositing:



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