Following Phil's comments on my last post regarding this project, I've tried to develop my best idea a bit more to see what everyone thinks.
A clown is working at a little girl's birthday party (where the skipping rope prop is) but messes up (possibly knocks over the cake? Causes a commotion, etc) and gets fired from the party company that he works for because of all of the bad press he is creating. Now unemployed and alone the clown becomes homeless and decides there's no other way out but to commit suicide. He climbs to the top of a tower block of flats and is preparing to jump when the little girl from the party appears - she lives in the block of flats that he's about to jump from. She begs him not to jump and the clown hesitates but eventually takes her hand and steps down from the edge.
It doesn't really have a proper ending yet, and it's quite a dark story, especially for me since I usually do lighter fantasy animations. But I'm trying to view it as trying something new that I haven't done before: and it's certainly something new to me. What do you think?
I don't think it needs to be super dark - just poignant - a story about second chances and discovering that you've made an impression on the world. I think the skipping rope needs a bigger job here because at the moment, this object could be replaced by any other kind of object and your story wouldn't miss it (this is often how you know that you're not 'using' the element proactively). Maybe think of the skipping rope as being important/significant in some symbolic sense for your character... is it connected to the back-story of your clown character for example? Does it explain why he/she feels the way they do? Also - just a thought - it's possible for your character to become a clown by the end of the story, so this might be a story of how someone goes from being miserable and lonely to becoming an entertainer?
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