The Spark of an Idea
I tend to come up with a lot of ideas. Some of them, I’d like to think, are genuinely good—ranging from a simple new DVD series to a fresh concept for a show. There are, however, other ideas that fall into a different category. It isn't that they are inherently bad; on the contrary, they could be thrilling to witness. But reality has a way of intervening. Sometimes images can’t be acquired, celebrities prove impossible to contact, or the sheer scale of the concept becomes too massive to create.
When I original came up with the idea to produced a "clubhouse" I created a logo for it. It was simple; just a tree and the title. I wanted the colors to really stand out and give it a youthful look. Of course looking at the color pattern now it looks simple and the correct wat to color each letter, but at the time I had a tough time deciding which pattern to go with.
One of the inspirations for the look of the "would-have-been" treehouse came from an
illustrator that I meet at Wonder-Con a few years ago. His name is Travis Hanson and he is the creator and illustrator for the Bean series. I contacted him and asked if he'd be interested in creating a treehouse home page. He was thrilled.
So I told him what I wanted and he did a few sketches, before coloring everything in.
Various tabs that I selected for the treehouse that would connect viewers to a short documented films were; the BOOKSHELF, the superhero POSTER, the DISNEY EARS, the poster of the DINOSAUR, the second BOOKSHELF hanging on the wall, the RADIO box next to the fish bowl, the outside view of an AMUSEMENT PARK, the TOY BOX, and TELEVISION SCREEN.
Development had begun on several short films designed for the various interactive tabs. These productions featured:
-
Documentaries focusing on vintage toys, accessible via the Toy Box icon
-
Features on classic science fiction programs, which guests could trigger by selecting the Dinosaur Poster
-
Interviews with various illustrators and authors, located within the Bookshelf section
To give you an idea of what one of this tabbed shorts would like like here are two samples. The first is from the Moments with Bob Gurr series and the second example is from Dining at the Mouse House.
The clubhouse would have been a great way to share a lot of the interviews that I have obtained, but the reality of creating hundreds of mini-docs would have been time consuming. Still, I wonder what the clubhouse would have looked like today.
