AGI Studio 1 - Week 5 - Related Works

Related works I've viewed this week.

Beetle + Bean 

Posted on 22nd of July, 2020. Has about 112,000 views so far.

Created by Nick Edwards for the Cartoon Network Studios Shorts series. The short has a similar feel to Adventure Time. It even has an ad to buy Adventure Time to watch on YouTube. 

The short is about two alien creatures, Beetle and Bean, and their friendship. When Bean feels ignored and disrespected by Beetle they decide to join a fighting contest to challenge a mighty warrior in an attempt to prove how serious they are. Bean sees Beetle sneaking away during the night, and loses trust in them. Then during the fight Bean gets beaten up, and at the last minute Beetle reveals that they do believe in them. Bean still loses the fight, but their friendship is strong again. 

Beetle is a relaxed character with a tendency to lie, or stretch the truth, to keep the peace with Bean.

Bean is impulsive and only focused on their own whims. Bean is annoyed that Beetle keeps talking down to them and ignoring them. There are side characters with bizarre and random personalities. The short has a strong focus on characters pulling funny faces and spouting zany lines. 

Bean has mysterious magic that they need to learn to control, which is a bit like Jake the Dog, as in the short the magic is mainly used to make Bean’s limbs longer and noodley.

Cadette In Charge 

Posted on 6th of February, 2020. Has around 1,450,000 views so far. 

Created by Henrique Jardim for the  Cartoon Network Studios Shorts series. Like Beetle + Bean, Cadette In Charge has an ad linked to the video, but this time it is to buy The Amazing World of Gumball. The humour and style of this short is definitely more in tune with Gumball.

The short follows Cadette, a human girl, and Nono, a dwarf star, who are at Space Camp, on a space station. The two love to play video games together, and it is Cadette’s goal to reach a goal rank in friendship with everyone at Space Camp. Cadette has a friendship journal she’s filling with these memories, and notices that there’s a page missing. Nono had torn out a page for the last kid Cadette needs to become friends with, Sam. This is a challenge as Sam sees everyone else as beneath him and only focuses on video games. Nono only wants to play videogames with Cadette, so attempts to sabotage her friendship goals. Cadette and Sam get assigned as partners in a homework assignment, and Cadette wins him over with her gaming skills, but in the end completely forgets to work on the homework assignment. In the end it turns out that Sam is the player that Nono has been losing to constantly in the video game, which is why Nono was trying to sabotage the friendship. Cadette is super excited that they got an F on the assignment, which she warps to be an F for Friendship. 

There’s a similar focus on funny faces and making the most of animation as a medium in regards to how the characters move and react to things like breaking bones as no big deal (and getting completely healed in the next beat).

The Wonderful Wingits

Posted on 20th of July, 2020. Has around 486,000 views.

Created by Leticia Abreu Silva for the Cartoon Network Studios Shorts series. This short doesn't have an featured ad like the previous two shorts, but is also more traditional in its writing than them. The short can be considered more dramatic in this regard, with a lack of bizzare one off faces, and zany non-sequitur lines. 

The short focuses on a travelling family theatre troupe. The main characters are siblings Tim and Iris. Tim is insistent on doing something for the big play and ends up breaking Iris's leg, and the home of some little creatures. The family doesn't believe Tim when he says the little creatures are out to get him. Iris gets upset when Tim is chosen to replace her in the play after he broke her leg ‘on purpose.’ Just before he has to step out on stage Iris notices the little creatures who are in waiting to attack and helps Tim fight back, which causes a huge disruption to the production of Hamlet. In the end the townsfolk love the outcome.

The short has a very structured intro with each character describing their personality and goal within their first few sentences. This details does stand out a bit once it’s noticed and detracks a little from the enjoyment of the short.