# **Locals Only - A Short Proposal**

**Description**

Locals Only will be a 2D animated short to be used as the 5-7 minute pilot episode for the creation of a complete animated series. The show is a TV-14/TV-MA rated comedy based around Duke, Flip, and Cam, three surfer beach bum friends in the fictional, Southern California surf town, Tidal Shores. They spend their days hanging out in their old, beaten up, van parked on their favorite locals only beach, La Playa Del Sol, drinking, smoking, talking shit to shoobies, and of course, tons of surfing.

As artists, we create content in the form of illustrations and animations that provides entertainment to our viewers. We see this as our own personal alternative to creating skate videos, for example, because this is something we are great at and love sharing with the world. Bringing laughter through comic relief and slapstick humor in animation presents itself as a great opportunity to bring a unique perspective to the Gnars community.

**Tone**

Locals Only features similar humor and animation styles as compared to various shows such as Beavis and Butthead, Family Guy, Rick and Morty, Brickleberry, and Jay and Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie.

**Sponsorship**

We are seeking a 7 ETH sponsorship to make one, 5-7 minute short animation of Locals Only. The funding will be used accordingly to ensure all artists, actors, and parties involved are compensated appropriately for their hard work and dedication to the creation of this pilot episode.

Each of the 7 members of the team will receive an equal payment of 0.75 ETH. 50% of the payment will be distributed to each individual upon receiving Gnars sponsorship and the outstanding 50% will be sent out after the animation is complete. From the remaining 1.75 ETH, 0.75 ETH will be held if we need to hire another artist or voice actor. If no further assistance is required, payments will be bumped up to 0.85 ETH per team member. The final 1 ETH will be used exclusively to cover submission fees for the various film festivals we will be submitting to.

**After the Short**

After the completion of this short, we will be submitting Locals Only to as many animation film festivals as we qualify for in order to be presented to as large of an audience as possible. Along with submitting to the festivals, we will be inquiring to pitch the series concept to various studios in hopes of creating a complete animated series. A variety of episodes have already been discussed for the future series and we truly believe that the sky's the limit for how many episodes could be created. Our dream would be to have the show as a weekly, episodic narrative, bringing people back on a regular basis to find out what kind of shenanigans our characters will get into next. We also plan to share the animation on YouTube and a variety of other social media platforms to maximize our viewers.

Conversations have already begun about one of the local, Denver skate shops potentially co-screening the Locals Only animation as part of their video premiers. This will not only give us the opportunity to screen our film on a semi-regular basis, but will also expose the Gnars project to a huge community of skateboarders which we believe could be very impactful.

**What about the Gnars?**

Throughout the Locals Only short, we will be featuring some of our favorite Gnars CC0 artwork in the form of stickers/artwork on the main characters van, graphic tee shirts on characters, surfboard logos, background graffiti, and whatever else we can think of to help get some of the amazing Gnartwork to a whole new audience. With the short being submitted to film festivals around the world while we simultaneously look for series pitch opportunities, many people will be able to see our homages to the Gnars we include in the animation. For our private screenings, we will include the Nounish-Gnars video at the end of our animation to help spread the word of Gnars and answer any questions people might have at that moment. We will also take that intimate opportunity to raffle off some Gnars from our personal collections we have been growing. Aside from presenting the Nounish-Gnars clip during private screenings, we will also include a permanent credit to the Gnars community for the sponsorship for all showings, including the film festivals. If the short does get picked up for a full series by a studio, we pledge to continue to include nods to the Gnars family, where applicable, in the animations in the form of hidden easter eggs, similar to how Bud Lite referenced the "noggles'' in their 2022 Super Bowl advertisement by hiding them on a painting in the background.

# **The Creators and Locals Only Team**

**Brett a.k.a. Pin.Pusher** - *Producer, Director, Writer, Animator, Character Designer*
Brett has been creating cartoons for most of his life. He has always been writing stories and coming up with characters for them from a young age, but his artistic career really started in 2016 after moving to Denver, Colorado. Countless street art characters, gallery shows, and murals later, these opportunities have taken Brett around the United States painting murals and doing pop up shows in a handful of different states. Brett returned to college in 2018 in order to pursure his love for cartoons and obtain a degree in 2D Animation. He is now in full swing creating looping animated gifs, writing stories, and creating new characters on a regular basis in hopes of creating a series of his own one day.

**Alexander Cuenin** - *Scriptwriter, Animator, Editor, Storyboard Artist*
Alex is a writer, director and animator who got his start making short films when he was young. After studying and making live action films for six years, both personal and professional projects, he then turned to learn 2D animation at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design. Alex has edited video essays professionally for the channel "Hello Future Me" (July 2019 - May 2022) and is currently the sole editor and animator for the shows "Tale Foundry" and "Worldsmiths" (since October 2020).

**Josh a.k.a. Mimer** - *Composer, Music and Sound Designer/Editor, Storyboard Artist*
Josh is an old school hip hop cat with a background in freight graffiti. He got into graffiti in the early 1990s and fell deeply in love with hip hop culture. He began making and performing his own music in the 2000s and started exploring his canvas paintings around the same time. In 2020, he started pursuing full production, audio formatting, and mastering of a few different music genres along with more recently experimenting with creating his own custom sound effects to assist Brett with some of his past gif animations.

**Greg Cipes** - *Voice Actor*
Greg is best known for his roles as the voices of Beastboy in Cartoon Network's "Teen Titans" series and Michaelangelo in Nickelodeon's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". Greg has also had plenty of other voice and live action roles in shows and movies such as "Astroboy", "Fast and the Furious", Ben 10", and "Star Wars- The Clone Wars". Aside from being the voice of many popular cartoon characters, Greg is also the co-founder of Bright Moments DAO which is recognized for their CryptoCitizens and being an NFT art gallery pioneering how art is being co-created & co-consumed around the world. More recently, Greg has co-founded the NFTv Network which is looking to bring the power of television creation to the people that enjoy it. Find out more about the NFTv Network here [NFTv Network](https://www.nftvnetwork.com/) and [NFTv Labs](https://nftvlabs.com/home)
Also check out this incredible article [NFTV Web3 TV Network Is “Old School MTV Meets Adult Swim”](https://nftevening.com/nftv-the-web3-tv-network-thats-old-school-mtv-meets-adult-swim/)

**Heath Hyche** - *Voice Actor*
Heath began his acting career in the mid 1990s appearing on sketch variety comedy shows. This show was titled "Saturday Night Special '' in which he co-starred alongside Roseanne Barr, Kathy Griffin, and Jennifer Coolidge with guest stars who included some of the biggest A-List celebrities in the late 90s. He also worked on a similar show in the 2000s called "Blue Collar TV'' featuring stand-up comedians, Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, and Bill Engvall. He also had a small role in "Man on the Moon '' starring Jim Carrey and Danny Devito. Being around these other actors he worked with during his career and having the opportunity to experiment with ideas has helped turn Heath into a specialist of creating characters which he uses to this day in his own stand-up comedy acts.

**Nascha a.k.a RobotFishGirl** - *Voice Actor*
Nascha has been in the entertainment industry for her entire life. Starting off with commercial roles for Disney and Universal at age three and working for Disney in various roles as she got older. She did everything from performance to administrative work every single year throughout high school. In college, she channeled a lifelong talent for impersonation and language into voice acting. Primarily working in the video game world, she helped bring to life dozens of characters from modded Skyrim companions to World of Warcraft orcs.

*MAY HIRE ADDITIONAL ARTISTS/ACTORS AS NEEDED*

# **The Main Cast**
**Duke** - Name homage to Duke Kahanamoku, father of modern surfing. Mid 20s. Born and raised right there by the beach. Duke is fairly tall, has shoulder length dirty blonde hair that is unkept. Blue eyes and fair skin that has been sun tanned. Duke just wants to surf all day and literally doesn’t care about anything else. He has lost almost every job so he gave up even trying to get a real one anymore. Duke usually can’t hold a relationship because surfing always comes before anything, sometimes even before food! Secretly he sings beautifully, but it is very uncommon that it happens. When someone hears his voice, they fall in love with the sound. But he doesn’t give a shit. Duke has weed on his person at all times, even while riding the waves.

**Flip** - Name homage to Filipe Toledo, Brazilian surfer. Mid 20s. Flip's family is from Brazil, but he was also born and raised in this small surf town. Physically, he is slightly shorter than Duke. He has olive/tan skin and brown hair which he usually has pulled back into a bun while he surfs. Flip also wears a necklace made from shells. He loves surfing just as much as Duke, but he always wanted something more from his life. He always had a dream of being a talk show host. Usually Flip has an alcoholic drink of different variations in his hand, but he is almost never seen drunk.

**Cam** - Maybe short for Cameron? No one really knows his origin at all. In fact he doesn’t talk much either. He is their cameraman and the shortest of the three. His brownish-red hair is usually covering his face. When asked a question, he either shrugs, shakes his head or some other indication of his responses. He surfs just as much and also partakes in smoking and drinking, but someone always has to offer it to him. He normally uses an old flash camera, but he recently found a vhs camcorder after some shoobie got drunk at the beach one day not too long ago and was arrested leaving it behind. He is also secretly a closet genius.

# **What's Next?**

Together we have the full story written for the Locals Only short animation completed and have made final revisions to the script. Initial character designs such as turnarounds and expression sheets are being worked on, as well as background designs. Post-sponsorship, more in depth character breakdowns will be completed. Secondary and background characters, along with storyboards, and final landscape designs will also be completed. At this stage, a theme song will be created. General music and sound effects to be used throughout the short will be mixed. Preliminary vocal recordings will also begin.

Once all those steps are complete, the team will take the storyboard, music, and preliminary vocal recordings to create a test animation before creating the final artwork, adding all the color, fine details, and final sound tracks.

Upon the finalization of the pilot, we will be working further with Greg Cipes, one of our voice actors. Greg has been working at Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon for over 10 years, helping bring to life some of the most beloved cartoon characters and has grown quite the following during this time, over 100k combined between his Twitter and Instagram. He has also been attending Comic Con's around the country doing panel talks, signing autographs, and taking photos with his many, many fans who cosplay as the characters he has voiced over the years. Aside from him being a voice actor and the co-founder of the well-regarded Bright Moments DAO, Greg is also the founder of the new NFTv Network. This platform is being used to help gain exposure and opportunities for upcoming and established animators in the NFT world and beyond.

We will be more than happy to share the sketches, storyboards, and plenty of other fun behind the scenes things with the Gnars community once the final animation is complete. We don't want to give away too many spoilers!

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to send me a dm on Twitter [@pin_pusher](https://www.twitter.com/pin_pusher)