. . . But clear in my mind is the memory that at the height of World War II in the midst of battle and chaos, a handful of artists, actors, designers and engineers didn’t fire on the enemy or capture the beach, . . . but saved the lives of their fellow soldiers by deceiving the enemy and winning, . . . at the Art of War.

An artful day-dreamer leads an unconventional team of artists through enemy lines to rescue his brother. He and his band of fellow oddballs have just their raw talents to complete the mission. Their only hope is anchored in their belief that they can bring those talents to life.

Loosely based on historic events, AOW is a cartoon in the tone of “Kelly’s Heroes” with a sprinkling of “Walter Mitty”. In hopes of saving his older brother (stranded behind enemy lines), Nash and his team of artists and oddballs concoct and execute a plan pulled deep from Nash’s head. Armed with only a shamble of warehouse supplies, and art department cast offs, the group sets out to save the day. Leaving a trail of comedic wins and devastating losses across the French country side. Through it all Nash discovers that the best way to shine is to trust in yourself and your abilities.

Story Breakdown

In the 1940’s world of Nash McCloud (our young artist and unlikely hero), it’s always been easier to disappear deep into his head than to deal with the difficulties of real life. His imagination is a place where his brothers’ games of catch on dusty sepia fields are transformed into vivid and heroic 

images of green grass, blue skies, and adoring fans. Endless chores, and dark news from around the world are churned into beautiful colorful, masterminded designs and ingenious contraptions. All serving as a way to shut out the real world and insulate him from its harsh realities. But no matter how deep our hero dives into his hidden-world, one day the call comes.  Nash must take-up his place alongside his brothers and not only find his way in it, but also find the confidence in his artistic talents to become the hero he truly is. 

Following his twin brothers Curtis and Lloyd, both of them picture-perfect ideals of the American heroes of the era and whose large shadows he struggles to get out from, (and trying not to disappoint his father), Nash enlists into the Army for the second World War. In the stresses and trials of basic training, Nash finds two new friends in Benjamin Zaffini “Zaf” and Julius Mori “Smudge”. Unfortunately, he also finds an odd foe (perhaps a spy); and nemesis in Captain Hans Maxwell. The three friends muddle their way through bootcamp, spending most of their time enjoying each other’s antics in the mess hall kitchen. Even here, imagination acts as a distraction for Nash. Simple chef hats spark creativity and help bond the three new friends. Paper airplanes take Nash on epic flights and eventually make him the object of Captain Maxwell’s distain and frustration.  They also set into motion; Nash’s journey to find his place in the war….and in the real world at large. 

As the twins swiftly rise through the ranks, they’re attached to important assignments, and are sent-off to perform important combat missions.

Meanwhile Nash, Zaf and Smudge are surprised to find themselves shipping out for a special assignment in France. Signs of the realities of the war greet them at every turn and Nash battles his fear with a barrage of fantasies and daydreams of a brighter and happier place. The morning of their first day on assignment, Nash, Zaf and Smudge walk through the neighborhoods of war-torn Paris where the houses are now just an over-grown tangle of stone, weeds and flowering vines. The three men walk quietly, still in awe of the city's beauty, while trying to grasp the devastation; like visitors to an old cemetery. 

Nash does his best to anchor himself in reality amongst the devastation, but when they see a group of children playing amongst the chaos, his imagination takes over and reality unravels. He nervously twists 

and tears a scrap of paper into a beautiful blossom, a replacement for a wilted yellow flower, tucked neatly behind the ear of a tiny girl in a dirty yellow dress. For Nash it’s an offering, a way to brighten her day. Lost deep in his head, he sees the girl fold the bloom into her hair, smile and begin to twirl. Her face lights up and the world around her begins to transform. Nash’s imagination spills sparkling snowy-white confetti from her hands and dress. Tiny slips of paper sprout through the cracks in the cobblestone beneath her feet, like fields of summer grass. They twist and bloom into thousands of ivory white flowers. The sun finds its way through the grey clouds and lights up the endless fields of glowing paper blossoms. Back lit, summer-dust lifts from the florets and fills the air. The old homes are replaced by glowing paper versions of themselves, and gleaming white trees and vines, blanketed in dangling streamers, unfold all around them. A gentle breeze lifts the streamers into a hero's parade and the little girl, now in a bright yellow dress, kicks a row of blossoms into the air. She twirls again and then smiles back at Nash. Zaf calls out to Nash pulling him from his day dream - Nash turns to see his two friends are now most of the way down the street. He looks back over his shoulder, back to reality, to see the little girl with the paper flower still in her hair. She spins in a dirty yellow dress in front of the burned-out homes, but still beaming from ear to ear like she too had seen every detail of Nash’s vision. She gives him a shy wave and runs off with her world (at least for the moment) just a tiny bit brighter.

As Nash settles into the day to day of military life, he’s surprised to find more like-minded comrades, including an understanding mentor in a Lt. Chaplin, as well as a new role that utilizes his unique perspective and skills in his new assignment at the US Office of Information and Propaganda. His confidence grows as he helps make art with purpose, even under the watchful eye of the mysterious and menacing Captain Maxwell from his boot camp days, who turns out to be his new commanding officer. 

Meanwhile, his brother Curtis while on a secret mission to deliver war changing plans, is blindsided by disaster. He and his men are dropped and injured far behind enemy lines. Nash’s other brother Lloyd and his platoon are sent to the rescue, but time is running out. After discovering the news of Curtis’ peril, Nash ponders what to do over a photo of the old family home. His artist's hand and imagination sketches bales of hay into tanks and jeeps, crows turn to diving fighters, and an old scarecrow in the front yard into a victorious hero, defeating the enemy! Nash thinks he has a plan . . . a plan of deception. 

Nash convinces his squad of misfit artists to join him in the rescue, a chance for them to really be part of the fight. As they prepare themselves for the mission, they discover that the map leading them to Curtis is gone and so is Maxwell.  Nash and his comrades’ suspicions about their commander’s loyalty seemingly confirmed. Now they must race across France and find Nash’s brother before the turncoat Maxwell and the German army reach them first, the fate of not only Nash’s brother, but the entire war itself at stake. 

During the hurried journey, the team fails to be the soldiers Nash so desperately needs and wants them to be. Deep behind enemy lines and struggling to get their vehicles and equipment over a faltering bridge in a terrible storm, Nash has a crisis of confidence that turns his imagination to the dark and terrifying for the first time. When his beloved mentor Lt. Chapman is lost to the river’s rushing waters, Nash loses all hope. But the encouragement of his friends and their rallying around him as their leader convinces Nash to push on. 

Deception Valley 

At the end of their long journey, far past the safety of the French countryside, the trucks coast into the aptly named Deception Valley on fumes. After finding his brother and the secret plans, and with the Germans set to soon arrive, Nash’s plan blasts into action. 

In an old church, Curtis follows Nash past a mass of cables and wires up into a cramped bell tower. At the top he grabs the handle of a tiny trap door but can't yet bring himself to push it open. Instead, as he closes his eyes tight and agonizes over images of the squad in Paris, the family on the farm, his parents, his brothers and Chaplin’s last moments on the bridge, doubts fill his head.

He opens his eyes and sees that Curtis is watching him. Curtis askes “In your head again, little brother?” “No, not this time” Nash answers back. Rubbing his eyes to clear the images away, he continues, “This one may have started there, but... this time it's for real or at least it sure needs to be.” The little wooden door is the last thing keeping him and his team from the payoff, the prize for a lifetime of planning, inventing... and dreaming. Nash pushes the hatch open, climbs to the top of the bell tower and yells down to Mac, “Fire em' up, Mac!" Mac gives Nash a thumbs up as she connects the last of the hoses to the compressor and fires it up. We track along as the compressor pushes air through a rubber hose and into a wooden crate. The sides of the crate creak, expand, and then burst open. From inside, a giant inner tube rolls out onto the ground and quickly fills with air. The tube expands into the shape of an American airplane. In the background, we see a group of five or six rubber tanks, all expanding and bouncing as they inflate. Smudge and Big Nick anchor the balloons to the ground and use shovels to push the dirt and mud into tank tracks behind each one. Smudge, now covered in mud from head to toe, smiles up at Nash as the village starts to spring to life. Near the old bakery, Smudge and Zaf have set up a motor pool. Wooden and canvas Jeeps wait in line to be fit with new tires made of painted balloons and paper cut outs. Store mannequins stand around in uniforms, back lit by flashes of light from road flares set up to look like welding torches. All around the village, in almost every window and door sits a soldier, stuffed with hay and dirt and armed with a rifle made of wood and paint. Smudge marks the doors of the buildings with signage: Mess Hall, Officers’ Club, and Ammo, scrawled in official military font. Big Nick quickly paints a flower box and flowers under the bakery window. Next to the Mess Hall, Irving puts the final stitches on a Sargent’s patch and pins it to a dress mannequin standing in a line of five soldiers. Otis pulls on a rope, connected to the "troops,” and the soldiers all simultaneously raise their guns. At the edge of the forest, Briggsy finishes a shallow trench and lines the bottom with bottle rockets and small homemade explosives. He wires the fuses together and covers them gently with leaves and brush. Back in the church, Cannonball and Big Nick fire-up several record-players. Suddenly, the sound of hundreds of marching men, the clatter of construction and vehicles fill the village and echo through the forest. Cannonball grabs the microphone and begins to play the parts of battalion leaders communicating on the battlefield.

Curtis looks at Nash with a look of utter amazement. At the top of the church's steeple Nash raises an American flag.  Tacked below is a small pennant with the silhouette of a scarecrow waving in the breeze. Suddenly he hears what sounds like gunfire in the distance. He stands up at the edge of the tower, looking out over the village, but he doesn't say anything. He just gives Curtis a short nod and a nervous half smile. Curtis answers back with his own nervous yet proud smile.  “They're here,” is all he says.

The German troops reach the valley's edge quickly and confidently. As they clear the tree line and scan the valley floor below, they're stunned to see that the small village seems to be teeming with Americans. It's somehow overrun with tanks and heavy artillery. Fighter planes and pilots stand at the ready. In the nearby fields, battalions of men sit low in bunkers and foxholes. Snipers protect doorways and rooftops and huge numbers of armed soldiers position themselves in the nearby forest just as the enemy crests the surrounding hills. Amazingly, through Nash’s artistic genius and his men’s dogged loyalty to him, the plan works! And the Germans squadron pulls back, not wanting to engage the might of Nash’s “scarecrow army.” As the enemy begins to move back up the ridge, and away, a premature celebration by the boys gives away their ruse and the enemy steals back into the village and captures the entire American squad of artists, Curtis, and the secret plans. Nash and his men fear the worst when they are confronted by a representative of the feared Nazi SS, who turns out to be none other than the traitorous Maxwell! But Nash’s brother and his men soon learn how well placed their faith in him is when it’s revealed that Maxwell is a double agent and confided this to Nash before the mission commenced. Nash even provided Maxwell with the “stolen” map to Curtis’s location voluntarily, knowing that he might need one last big deception to turn away the Germans. Maxwell sends the Germans away empty-handed, and the plans, his brothers and the Allied war effort have all been saved thanks to Nash, his men and his amazing imagination and skill!

Production

Leaning on a vast background of animation production experience, AOW will encompass a traditional 3D production approach, with a plan for substantial reuse of both Char and Environment assets. Though the story is heavy with Main and Secondary characters, the tertiary characters (such as the crowds in Paris and Bootcamp soldiers) will be designed in a modular system.  The environments will also be artistically contained. The buildings in France, Camp Atterbury and Deception Valley will be of modular design (with just a handful of building shapes, containing movable windows and doors to dress and vary each structure.) Set extensions will be done mostly in Matte Painting and Comp. Other than a few establishing shots (also done as Matte Paintings), the environments are to be designed as closed-off to vast horizons and/or cityscapes. This makes the production design almost “sound-stage” like. Other than a few key scenes, production will keep away from heavy FX. Simulations for moments with water, fire, dust and mud will be kept to a minimum. Due to our simple costume designs, cloth can be mostly rigged, avoiding costly sims. For the fantasy sequences (so important to our film), we are currently exploring alternative animation techniques such as paper cutouts, stop-motion, and stylized 2D and 3D.