'Ook and the Blue Wheels' by Luka Pinto

Luka's animation begins with Ook skating down the street, looking almost like the opening scenes of Mr Benn walking down Festive Road and indeed some of the music Luka uses is also reminiscent of British 1970's children's animation. His character 'Ook' could be compared to 'Morph'. Here however is where the likenesses end, this animation is aimed at a much older audience as we discover when Ook spikes Burney the policeman with 'liquid 666' and Burney slips into a Luka's time-lapse animation of graffiti inspired felt-tip pen doodles.

The bottle of 'liquid 666' was the beginning inspiration for this story, Luka discovered it in a cabinet of Victorian medicines at the Jersey Museum. In the original illustration project the story was much longer, there was a whole background to Ook and Burney's relationship. As many of the other students have, Luka has had to edit his ideas in order to achieve a finished animation in just 6 weeks and the story feels more sophisticated for it.

Luka has been incredibly organised over the course of this project and has constantly refined ideas through experimenting by making tester animations to help him understand the very best ways to animate his characters. I have had a sneak preview today of the scene of Ook skateboarding down the street, (you can see the tester animation for that scene here on Flickr) it looks fab, I'm also looking forward to seeing Burney's trip scene when Luka switches from cutout animation to time-lapse photography. You can see some more animation tests for that technique here on Flickr. You can also see recognise an influence from Blu and David Ellis in Luka's work, see more about those artist's work on Luka's blog post here.

Below are Luka's storyboard instructions.

1. Ook comes out of the front door with his 'liquid 666' and skateboard. Ook side on in front of door (1-3 seconds)
2. Ook skateboarding down the road. Ook side on, move along background of row of houses as Ook skates (2-7 seconds) Sound of skateboarding, cars, maybe background noise of people.
3. Burney the Policeman is sat on a bench, Ook spikes Burney's coffee with his 'liquid 666' without him noticing and runs off. Camera slowly moving from right to left. Sound of cars, sound of Ook laughing a little bit (1-5 seconds)
4. Burney drinks his spiked coffee, view Burney straight on. Sounds of cars slowly fade out as he drinks, sound of mechanical toy being wound up (2-5 seconds)
5. Burney's trip scene. Time-lapse animation of doodles. Music; Mr Bungle, Gollem II, at 24 seconds the song sucks up, cut at the first frame of scene 6
6. A dog barking wakes Burney up, he walks out of frame. Back to everyday sounds of cars (3-7 seconds)
7. End credits, time-lapse animation of doodles again. Sound of skateboards (3 seconds)