Help us win a dog park! (Yes, this is in the correct forum) ;)
Doodle Designs
Posts: 34
Hi!
I'm getting involved in trying to win a contest so that my local community can win $$$$ to build a dog park.
I live in Silver Cliff, CO, a VERY small town.
How small is it?
It's SOOOOOoooo small that every time you bend over to tie your shoes, your butt is outside city limits. :)
PetSafe is a company that makes electronic fences and other products for dogs. They are having a "Bark for Your Park" contest where communities can compete to win $100,000 or $25,000 to build a dream dog park.
The contest is done in two phases. Phase one is where the communities get people to vote for them online at the PetSafe website and on their Facebook page. The first phase has just ended and we are waiting to hear who the top 15 winners are. They choose 5 winners, based on number of votes, for three community size categories - small, medium, and large, based on population size.
Silver Cliff is the smallest of all of the competitors, with a population of 590.
Unfortunately, since the voting goes by number of votes, it's very hard for smaller towns to get enough votes to make it to the top. We are waiting for the official results, but it appears that we may have just squeaked by to the #5 position in the small category. If this turns out to be so, then the next phase of the contest is for all top 15 contestants to create a video to encourage people to vote for them in phase 2.
I'm working with a small (of course) group of people here in Silver Cliff to make the video. I suggested that we combine animated toon characters with live footage for our contest entry. I think that would make our video stand out from the rest and hopefully give us an edge.
I was thinking of using the toon characters from 3D Universe which are sold on Daz's website:
We are trying to come up with script ideas and I would welcome any suggestions. One idea, since the dog park will be called Dundee's Walkabout Dog Park, is to have a toon dog named Dundee, with an Australian accent, involved with the video. Dundee was the name of an Australian Shepherd dog that belonged to the people who owned the local veterinarian hospital. They are retired now, but they have donated the land upon which the dog park will be built. The dog park is only part of the 2.86 acre Dundee Memorial Park which will also have trails for people.
You can see info on the park, and a sketch of the plans, on the park website: http://www.dundeememorialpark.com/
We want this video to be as funny as possible since I think humor sells. Just think of what pops in mind when someone says "funny commercials". "Where's the beef?" "That's one spicy meatball!" Old commercials, but forever engraved on America's minds! :)
Being the smallest community in the contest means that we have to work all that much harder to win. Because we are so small, we don't think that we will win the contest based on number of votes, but there is a special Bark From Your Heart Award - $25,000 for the city that has the highest community participation in the contest (i.e. the highest percentage of votes based on their population). In phase one Silver Cliff had the highest percentage at 287.73%. That won't guarantee we win based on votes, since we had the fewest, but if we can get that high a percentage, or more, for the phase two voting, we just might get the special award.
We will know June 5th if we made it to the finals. But, even if we don't get in the finals from phase one, we may still make a video because it may help us with fund raisers. The park WILL be built - it's just a matter of how long it takes to gather donations. The PetSafe contest is the quickest prospect we have.
Any help anyone can give us would be greatly appreciated!
BTW - I get the name of Doodle Dream Designs from my own dog, who is a Golden Doodle (half Golden Retriever, half Poodle). Her name is Angel.
Now how can you say, "No", to a face like that? :D
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Comments
I uploaded a few animations that I've made in the past to a YouTube channel. http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpP1ZYC9OWN1oGrNlW2LKhQ
They're all pretty much just playing around experiments, but I'm hoping they've given me enough experience to put together a nice video for the contest.
The Rockin' Christmas video is the closest to what I have in mind, since it uses toons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLJSbthsttI
Take a look at the two videos that I Favorited. They're clips from Pixar's Up! animated movie. I was thinking maybe working a "SQUIRREL!" moment or two into our video.
In addition to Daz Studio, I have Photoshop, Mimic Pro (lip synching), and Pinnacle Studio 12 (video editing) at my disposal for putting this together.
Cross your fingers, ummm... paws, for us! :-)
what kind of help do you need ?
Generating ideas mainly.
We want the video to be FUNNY! I need to keep the animation to a minimum since we have time constrains. I just spent a couple hours Googling for animal animations to use on Bacon the dog, which just led me to the conclusion that the best way might be to not try anything too fancy. What's out there is very limited, almost non-existent. It would take too much time to try to use what little there is and try to tweak it to be acceptable for Bacon.
So, I was kinda thinking along the lines of maybe having Bacon be the narrator. This way, animation would be limited to mostly his head. Maybe he'd be a newscaster or something along those lines. Fortunately, Bacon has a Mimic DMC file that can be used in Mimic to lip sync.
One idea I had was to show funny video clips of dogs and have Bacon do a newscast or maybe just narrate. At the end Bacon' will say something like, “And if we win, we promise to keep the LOLs coming!”
Another idea, since this video is to promote voting for the dog park prize, is to show clips of things dogs miss out on when they don't have a dog park and possibly how dog parks are beneficial for people. Keeping things informative, but funny.
I've been getting ideas for the clips by Googling "funny dogs" and looking at pictures and YouTube videos.
The clips will all be of local dogs since the whole idea is to show why our community should win.
We need to write a script before we begin shooting the video so any ideas people have for what is going on in the clips and the funny narration Bacon gives would be fantastic! Bear in mind that these are just pets were dealing with here, not trained acting dogs. so don't go too crazy! lol
Or maybe go as crazy as you want and we'll see what we can do! :)
" So, I was kinda thinking along the lines of maybe having Bacon be the narrator. This way, animation would be limited to mostly his head. Maybe he’d be a newscaster or something along those lines. Fortunately, Bacon has a Mimic DMC file that can be used in Mimic to lip sync.
One idea I had was to show funny video clips of dogs and have Bacon do a newscast or maybe just narrate. "
Good idea - have people film their dog - then you can do Bacon saying - sat - down - roll over and so on - while the dog doesn't do anything
or not what Bacon is saying , while Bacon is watching .
Then when he turns to talk again - the dog would do what it's suppose to .
I think this pretty much what you through of all ready .
You could do a parking of dogs like cars parking at a football or baseball game - with Bacon telling them where to go
You could put dogs up in trees like cats - you could have cats being walked ( my cat loves to be walked - not with dogs ).
Thanks for the ideas, Addict!
We had a meeting today to discuss the ideas everyone had come up with so far and we decided that we would do a news cast. Here is what we've come up with so far.
CNN (Canine News Network) anchor, Indiana Bones, would do a piece on the struggle of the tiny Western town of Silver Cliff, CO in trying to raise funds for a much-needed dog park. Colorado Cliff, the local news affiliate from KDOG TV, would interview local dogs as they explain how beneficial it would be for the town to have a dog park - not only for themselves, but for their significant humans.
Here are a few of the ideas...
For example, we could show a bunch of puppies playing while their mother's discuss how nice it would be for there to be a safe place for them to play, away from all the coyotes, foxes, eagles, mountain lions, and bears that are common to the region. During the interview, one of the pups interrupts and asks what that funny looking animal over there is. Mom tells him it's a prairie dog (also common to the region). The pup then asks, "Are we related to prairie dogs?"
Some people here think that there may very well be more dogs here than people. We could have dogs complaining about how long the lines are. We could show a clip of dogs lined up waiting to use a fire hydrant. One of the male dogs grumbles about how long the "girls" take. A female responds that they don't take any longer than the males who just love to dawdle while they sniff.
We could have a group of dogs that got thrown out of the local bar for disorderly contact because they didn't have anywhere better to hang out.
Or, we have show a scene of a group of dogs being thrown in the local hoosegow by the deputy canine officer (a min-pin dressed in cowboy hat). Their wives bewail how they never would have gotten in trouble if they had only had a dog park to go to rather than playing poker.
We may periodically have a cat show up in the background with a picket sign. One time it will say, "Unfair to cats!" Another time it may say, "We want a CAT PARK contest!" Perhaps we'll over hear two cats having a conversation. "Well, at least we'll know where they are. The streets will be safer."
We may also have a few SQUIRREL!" moments. If you've seen Pixar's movie, UP!, then you know what I'm talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBWrMQVsuak
This is what we've come up with so far, but we could use more ideas. Again, the FUNNIER the better! :)
We want lots of ideas, even though we have only 30 seconds, so that we can see which ones we like best and also which ones it's possible to actually pull off. Also, if it turn out that we aren't in the finals like we think, we can still use the ideas to make an even longer video that we can use to continue to try to raise funds.
We really do appreciate any help anyone can give us, and we would of course give credit in the YouTube description.
WE MADE IT TO THE PETSAFE "BARK FOR YOUR PARK" CONTEST FINALS!
Silver Cliff, CO has made the finals! WHOO-HOO!!!
We barely squeaked by into last place, BUT WE MADE IT! :-D
We're very excited about being in the finals and are already at work on our 30-second video which will be used to encourage people to vote for us in the finals.
If you'd like to support us, you don't have to wait for the video to be completed, you can start voting for us right now!
Each person can vote twice per day: once on the PetSafe Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PetSafeBrand/app_321086731284099 page and once at http://www.petsafe.net.
Vote now!
The videos are due June 26th and we get extra votes for every 1000 views of our video on YouTube so, once it's posted, please view often and invite others to see it too!
We are the smallest town in the contest so please, if you can, vote for us every day from now until the contest voting ends July 21st. The final winners will be announced July 31st.
All of us here in Silver Cliff that have dogs would certainly appreciate your support in voting and spreading the word. We are a community of only 580 people (likely more than that in dogs!) and we are competing against cities with populations in the hundreds of thousands!
Please vote! Silver Cliff, CO!