Everyone Is Special In Their Own Stupid Way

Everyone Is Special In Their Own Stupid Way

Written/Directed by: Phil
Animated by: Derek
Starring: Phil, Derek

The educational tale of a young orange-haired fellow who learns an important life lesson.

Download the video!
Length: 6 minutes, 48 seconds

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EXTRAS
Watch with audio commentary by Phil and Derek
Storyboards
Ending Song MP3
Bum

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Commentary by Phil (director/writer)

This project was originally a short play for my grade 9 religion class, and had no title. We were probably learning something about accepting people the way they are, so that's why we had all that stuff about Rob and his reddish Carrot Top hairdo and how he handles being made fun of for his looks. We were put in groups, and mine included me, my friend Jason Rolfe, and his buddies Michael Henry, Robert Schultz, and Arthur...something. I don't remember his last name. Arthur actually did nothing except show up for the presentation of the play, so that's why you don't see his name in the writing credits. The majority of it was written by Jason, and he gave it his own brand of slapstick humour (the bum, sausage kid, Mr. T to name a few...). Skip ahead about five years and I dug out the play from an old writing folder while searching for new movie ideas. I revised it and made it screenworthy, planned some of it in my head, but didn't really do anything with it until I showed it to Derek and he suggested doing it as a Trashimation project since live action would be a bit difficult because of things like Mr. T or a kid with a Carrot Top hairdo. 

The bulk of my work for the movie happened a while later. In one day I sat down with Derek and we decided on what all the shots will look like, and I drew out the storyboards. Then we recorded all the lines. Somehow I ended up doing everyone except the dad and Jay (the first bully you see). From there I had to trust Derek to follow the storyboards and animate it all. Over the next month (or close to a month) we worked on it. Derek would animate a little, show it to me, we'd discuss how to improve it, and then it would be fixed up. Derek also added in his own bit of humour through the animation. Just look at things like facial expressions and the way people move and you'll see. 

This was certainly a fun movie to work on, and probably the most collaborative out of all the Collab movies, and it was nice to do a non-spoof thing as well. Thanks to Derek for taking on the big job of animating. I'm very proud of this movie and I hope you all enjoy it as much as we did making it!

Commentary by Derek (illustrator/animator)

Phil originally showed me the script for this project some time ago. I read it over, and found it to be funny and charming, but it wouldn't be til much later that the idea of collaboration arose. For me, it began with the recent  desire to return to Trashimation.

For the new Trashimation movie. I wanted the form to evolve a bit, so I started experimenting with different animation  methods that were within my grasp. What I came up with, and developed during the production of EISITOSW, boils down to still backgrounds, three repeating frames of characters, and mouths that appear on top during speech.  Things still aren't very animated in a sense of motion, but there's something in that crude jumpy lines look that is very attractive to me in a primarily non-sexual manner.

Anyway, I began writing a script for a Power Rangers spoof, but threw it on the backburner after a while. That's when EISITOSW entered my mind. I don't know why or how exactly, perhaps I was eating carrots. Or maybe I was reminded of the Catholic ranger because of working on Power Rangers. Thatwould make more sense. Yes. Well, I brought it up
in a thread somewhere on the forum, Phil said "Sure!" and the rest is history.

This was a fun project, beginning to end - the storyboards, voice acting, even drawing all those characters over and over again... I'm very happy with the way it came out. Hopefully this is the first of many (or at least a few) under the Trashimation Collabs name!