Dumtendo: The Movie

Members: Grant McDonald, Logan Sroufe, Arica Lyons, Kevin Cosby, Christen Lubbers

What Is Dumtendo? Dumtendo is a dark comedy employing both live action and animation to tell the story of lonely gamer sucked into the world of his 8 bit gaming system.

Storyline: Scott is a lonely gamer who lives in his mother's basement. One day, he is abruptly sucked into the world of his 8 bit gaming system. When he arrives, he finds that he must not only play the games but fight for his life because many of the characters in the system are out for revenge because they feel that Scott abandoned them once gaming systems began to evolve beyond the 8 bit system.

The Brains Behind Dumtendo:

• Grant McDonald: Animator
• Logan Sroufe: Production Designer/Animator
• Arica Lyons: Web Designer
• Kevin Cosby: Post Production Supervisor/Animator
• Christen Lubbers: Marketing/Designer/Animator

Development Process:

• Pre-production:
  • Scriptwriting
  • Character/Set Design
  • Storyboard
• Animation
• Web Site Development and Launch
• DVD Production

Project Challenges: Prior to this course, no team members have ever taken on a project of this scope and dimension. No team member has any previous experience in developing an animated short, much less employing Flash as an animation tool.

A lot of time is needed to adequately research and test content creation. Maintaining momentum and continually progressing with positive results will be an ever-present goal.

Digital Tools Used:

• Adobe Flash CS4
• Adobe After Effects CS4
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Dreamweaver
• Final Cut Pro
• Encore

Original Inspiration: The idea came from a conversation that Phil Hepfinger and Grant McDonald had the summer of 2009 about coming up with a project so they could experiment with using Flash as an animation tool.

Phil went off and wrote the script, finishing it only one day. After reading it, Grant decided he not only liked it but wanted to create an animation to employ the script. The Digital Media Projects class seemed the perfect environment to get it accomplished.