Dangerous Feast

Another jokey one! I had a lot of fun with this one!

This was great! The core idea was [I think] a brain fart from my friend Bianca. I asked her to brainstorm something for me to work with and she threw "Ants and Ant-Eaters" at me. I love that girl.

The next night, I show up with this dumb idea (I may have been playing Earth Defense Force) or I may have got Pacific Rim on disc or something. But I thought about the basic comedic inversion: of course I should make the the predator become the prey by having the prey become the predator!

... but that's too easy, right?

So I took the inversion and made yet another layer of irony atop the predictable: now the predator-turned-prey is struggling to maintain the status quo and regain the role of predator despite being under threat of turning out wholly outmatched by the prey. Now I can dial up the situation, by having the setting be a little intense and adding some attitude and dimension to the principle actors to tell a visual story at a glance. Predators are ready to eat and suddenly it's time for the Ant-eater resistance to gear up for a guerrilla warfare picnic! The Kaiju-caliber insect gets no characterization because it's the other, and is inherently presented  with stark contrast to the Ant-eaters who have posing, faces,  equipment, and some obvious intent in their ruined city.

Silverware? Check! Condiments? Check! Plates and eating materials? Check! Now I needed to go learn a few things such as 'what does an ant look like?' or, 'What's an ant-eater look like?' then, 'What's the easiest way to  make scale apparent with distant objects and characters?' Then I have to figure out how to make make these characters cartooney and pose-able.

As I said, I had a lot of fun with this.