Test Concept Artist Guidelines:

Please send us a moodboard based on the concept ,scripts and references below. Please make 1 clean, colorized design of the two characters based on your moodboard.

Pitch: Nick’s egomaniacal colleague Steve has somehow turned his life into the most ridiculous sketches ever made. Think sassy voice-overs, random spoofs at your expense and the extra awkwardness that comes from you unwillingly starring in the midst of it all. Well that’s what Nick’s reality has become… the perfect recipe for an absurdly weird disaster. Meta-humorous at heart, the show combines absurd situations with expected sketch tropes to deliver a set of surreal comedic moments.

Tone: Absurd, Surreal, Geek, Trash, Meta

Format: Webseries, 24x 1.30’

Target: Age: 18-25

Culture: Western audience

Sex: 60% M/ 40% F

Inspiration: ASDF, Adult Swim shows(Robot Chicken, Rick and Morty)

Script:

STEVE

I’ve decided, that you’re going to be in my sketch, NICK.

NICK

No

STEVE

You’re welcome. You start now.

NICK

Well, I don’t want to be in your sketch, so... I’m not gonna be.

STEVE

I don’t know what to tell you, you’re in it... so...

NICK

Well, the door’s there, so I’m going to get up and leave.

NICK walks out of the door, right back into the same room where STEVE is waiting, brandishing a lightsabre.

STEVE

Right into the next scene.

NICK Wha-?

STEVE

Now we duel!

STEVE attacks a shocked looking NICK.

Script 2 – THE VO – 30s INT. WHITE ROOM – DAY

STEVE and NICK are sitting at a table in the white room.

NICK

What are we doing?

STEVE

You’ll see NICK I don’t see what you –

VO (interrupting)

NICK was suspicious. Steve’s brilliant mind had tricked him before.

NICK

Did you hire a voiceover

VO

The best voiceover

NICK

When are letting me out?

STEVE

But NICK, you’re free to leave whenever you like?

VO

NICK was not free to leave whenever he liked.

NICK

Did you –

STEVE

Don’t listen to him NICK, we’re friends.

VO

A relationship built on a lie.

STEVE and NICK stare at each other.

STEVE

Isn’t he cool?

NICK

Yeah, he is kinda cool

VO

They stared at each other deep in the eyes.

Awkward pause

VO

They had steamy sex later that evening.

Script 3 – LIES – 20s INT. WHITE ROOM – DAY

STEVE and NICK are sitting at a table in the white room.

STEVE

So, I fired the VO for making terrible lies at the end of the last sketch.

NICK

You didn’t want to pay him did you?

STEVE

No, I didn’t

VO

No, he didn’t

STEVE

You’re here on your own time!

Silence

STEVE (CONTINUED)

That’s what I thought. So, I was thinking –

VO

Steve farted!

There is an awkward pause.

STEVE

I didn’t –

VO

Steve lied!

There is another awkward pause.

VO

Pay me, and I’ll stop Leaning forward towards STEVE,

NICK whispers in an aggrieved voice.

NICK

I can’t believe you’d lie to me

Script 5 – DAMSEL IN DISTRESS – 35s INT. WHITE ROOM – DAY

Nick is tied to a chair.

NICK

STEVE, why am I tied up?

STEVE

You’re a damsel in distress.

NICK

Why do I have a wig? Why am I in a dress? Why do I have boobs!!!

STEVE

You just shut up and be beautiful until I rescue you.

NICK

Where’s my dick, Steve! What have you done with my dick!

He stops struggling for a second, and realises his chair is suspended in mid-air over a tank of water.

NICK (CONTINUED)

What’s that underneath me? Is that a shark?!

STEVE

Kinda

NICK

Why does it look like a bear?!

STEVE

Well, the bear cage was next to the shark cage, I mean, you can’t explain love.

NICK

Get me down from here!

STEVE

I will, and it will be epic, and then you will cry and will gratefully let me make passionate love to you.

Instantly, NICK cuts the cords holding him and he falls into the shark-bear tank and is eaten by the bear-shark.

STEVE stares sadly into the tank.

VO

Tragedy…

STEVE

I’m still not paying you!

Description of the characters:

STEVE is a positive person. As master of his animated reality, he can often come across as smug, arrogant, and unhinged. That’s because he is. Invariably calm and in control of any situation, STEVE lives for conjuring the most banal situations to inflict upon his best friend, NICK, no matter how humiliating or soul-destroying. Unflappable and always ready to see the best of a bad situation, STEVE wants above all things, to create the perfect sketch. It’s just a shame NICK has to whine about it all the time.

NICK is a cynic. He never used to be, he used to be quite happy and funny, actually, until he was trapped in STEVE’s mind. He’d never really liked STEVE in the real world to be honest. STEVE was always the guy in the corner, tinkering away at Pokemon Go long after everyone had stopped playing, smiling a little too wide and making a little too much eye-contact. So, when STEVE invited him over one day to play a new game, NICK had gone more out of a sense of moral duty, then any true reasons of friendship. Then, STEVE trapped him in an animated world with no exit. NICK tried being firm, polite, horrifically impolite, violent, murderous, pathetic, but nothing would work. Doomed to roam STEVE’s mind forever as a pawn in STEVE’s increasingly bizarre scenarios, the embittered NICK still harbours hope that he will find the way out of this place, before he goes mad.

Physically, we would like you to create simple, distinguished characters that can be easily recognized at the beginning of the episode. STEVE and NICK have to look antagonistic although they are simply designed. Visual references: We are looking for something very simple and lo-fi, yet very efficient, easily recognizable, with a strong identity, very easy to animate. We would like an intermediate between stick figures and cartoon charac.