Cat Ballet

Contents:

1  Cat Ballet Introduction

2  Urban Cat Ballet Products

3  The Cat Ballet Ad.

4  The Cat Ballet Ad. Script

5  Forest Cat Ballet Products

6  PITCH: Cat Ballet As A Series Of Children’s Books Or Perhaps, Even A TV Series

7  Psychedelic Cat Products

8  Collaborators & Licenses

1   Cat Ballet Introduction

As you may have noticed, there are two main Cat Ballet illustrations, Urban Cat Ballet & Forest Cat Ballet. Together, they form the basis for a proposed series of Children’s books or perhaps, even a TV series (for more on that, see section #6, below). We’ve included a bonus image, Psychedelic Cat, as well (see: section #7)

 

2 Urban Cat Ballet Products

 

3 The Cat Ballet Ad.

The Cat Ballet ad was lots of fun to create – heck, anything with a good Disco soundtrack provides such RETRO-Cool, that half an ad maker’s job is done!

4 The Cat Ballet Ad. Script

In case you can’t see the video, the ad is in two parts:

PART 1 features a SEXY male Disco dancer, Rico, who we find in a garish, slightly trippy dungeon – which I thought made an unexpected set – which provided me with the opportunity of using the wonderful alliteration, dangerous Disco Dungeon. Running with that idea, I wondered whether Rico, our very G-rated Lothario, might be even be suggesting a vanilla S&M rendezvous with one (or more) lucky viewer(s).

RICO:  Hello Ladies, Rico, here, coming to you, LIVE from the dangerous Disco Dungeon.

Yes, if you live for The Dance, you will love Suburban Geek’s Urban Cat Ballet & Forest Cat Ballet – little pussy cats fighting the Bad Guys, to make the world a better place.

PART 2 is the “SELL”, featuring the image of a young woman, looking bored. I attempted to make her a little more interesting by adding some visual gags, followed by a quick montage of the Cat Ballet designs.

SELL VOICE:  Yes, ladies, you, too, can make the world a better place – or you just become a moodier millennial – by waving your credit card at Suburban Geek’s Urban Cat Ballet, Forest Cat Ballet and Psychedelic Cat T-shirts & Stuff.

Sales copy promises by Suburban Geek are not legally binding.

 

5 Forest Cat Ballet Products

6 PITCH: Cat Ballet As A Series Of Children’s Books Or Perhaps, Even A TV Series

6.1 The set-up

The Cat Ballet stories center around two feline sleuths – sisters – one lives in the city (Cheezy, the yellow cat from Urban Cat Ballet), one in the country (Ruby, the red cat from Forest Cat Ballet) – patently, they each have two friends, other gifted cats, who float in and out of the stories. Here’s the twist – like children from broken marriages:

The cats’ adventures result directly from the odd, slightly convoluted lives that their humans (or parents) lead.

6.2 The Back Story

It all started a couple of years back, when Cheezy’s human, recently divorced, Private Detective Tom Katz (ahem!) found two kittens (Cheezy & Ruby) in the outside laundry of his apartment block. Panicking, he rang the one person in the world who he trusted, his former sister in law, Geraldine – Tom & Jerry, geddit? Divorcee, Gerry, runs a small organic farm outside the city (with the help of her retired parents) and suggested Tom leave the kittens with her while he found them homes. However, once Tom brought the kittens over and Ruby had crawled into Geraldine’s lap, making herself comfortable, the two immediately adopted each other. In her pleasantly New Age way, Geraldine soon coerced Tom into promising to keep Cheezy, too.

The result: an “instant” broken family – but in a good way!

Cheezy & Ruby – though cats – function as young girls – make that really smart young girls, who love ballet and have genuine “girl” conversations – though they refrain from doing so, in front of humans.

6.3 Further Thoughts On This Broken Family

6.31 Tom & Gerry have a bumbling, complicated attraction for each other, that they both, understandably, feel hampered in developing. Instead, they become a cheer squad for each other’s plays in the Dating game, so, there’s plenty of scope for snippets about Loneliness, Divorce, Love & Attraction that could provide young girls with a realistic – but still warm – glimpse of what Life might hold in store for them

6.32 However, that friendship sees Tom & Gerry popping in and out of each other’s lives. Gerry runs a stall at the city’s Farmer’s Markets every Thursday – so, she generally stays over at Tom’s place on those evenings, making Thursdays the day that the cats generally have their Urban adventures. Usually, it’s to help Tom – who’s not a particularly good Private Detective. Occasionally, when Tom spends a week-end in the Country with Geraldine, working on farm chores that she can’t do, the cats zoom off to have a rural escapade in the forest adjoining the farm. Those adventures tend to be with other animals or with humans – hunting, dumping rubbish etc.

6.32 With Cheezy & Ruby having to live in separate homes, their loneliness provides both of them with the opportunity to develop other friendships, in particular, with the other cats, who float in and out of the stories. Those cats also have very human-like quirks, such as one always being hungry, or another possessing a sardonic sense of humor etc. but they all still portray random cat-behavior, such as jumping into and sitting in boxes or spontaneously springing into the air etc.

6.4 Potential Market & Development

The Cat Ballet books would be aimed at 4-10 year old girls, though boys would be a secondary market, I guess. The cats provide genuine role models for girls, in that they are smart and certainly know how to solve problems. (Unfortunately, Tom is oblivious to much of the good work that the cats do – and has instead, taken to considering himself freakishly lucky.)

If the books are a success, then, almost by definition, there would be a global market of fans in place and Cat Ballet could step up to become a half-hour TV adventure Comedy series with fairly low production costs and many vertically-integrated, merchandising opportunities.

I don’t actually want to write the books – I think that they deserve a specialist, female author – but I’d love to see the series developed and just take my percentage – I’m ready to talk!

 

7  Psychedelic Cat Products

Psychedelic Cat is a FUN extra that was created when I was experimenting with the image of one of the Cat Ballet cats – you never know, there could be other variations on the way.

 

8  Collaborators & Licenses

As far as I’m aware, the artistry for the Cat Ballet characters is a one-off, I mean, a true one-off, in that the artist, Adam, who drew them, only did one professional job (which was for me) and has since disappeared. Adam’s girlfriend, Austeja Slavickaite, is a professional illustrator, who I discovered through a Freelance agency. I’m guessing that she posted Adam’s naive drawing of their cat, Roger, as a joke. Patently, Adam wasn’t considered “talented” but for me, his drawing really conveyed  something special, a genuine love for Roger.

Within moments, the twisted neurons in my brain came up with a topic, Cat Ballet, which I quickly Googled. Finding no similar illustrations on the subject, I decided to take a punt on Adam’s talents – the brief was pretty simple, draw a cat in a tutu for me. I was enchanted by what Adam came up with and within a few days, I had 2 sets of 3 cats doing ballet.

I then got to work on them, changing the cat’s colors and through collage, placing them in the two different environments. Urban Cat Ballet’s background was provided by Blogphoto.tv (offered for any use – including commercial – to members of their mailing list) & Outdoors-enthusiast, Teddy Kelley, kindly gave me permission to use his photograph for what became the Forest Cat Ballet background, when we corresponded via Flickr.

Video insert:   Chinese Cat Video CC 0

Music:  The ad’s wonderful music bed, Disco Funk Intro 2, was written & produced by Jimmy Bond, from Ukraine, originally distributed via Audio Jungle but now no longer listed there. Suburban Geek has continued use of it through a Standard Music License

Voice 1:  The SEXY Rico voice actor was provided by Aaron/The Chiz Show  &

Voice 2:  The  SELL voice-over was provided by the very professional, Will Stauff

Foley:  Production Mark

Stills:  Bored Millennial Girl – FREE image     Lips  CC0      Cat’s Eyes  CC0