A few things to remember...

First of all, I'm so jealous that I won't be able to give any time to the project because of my schedule however I do have some ideas I'd like to throw out there.

First thing's first... like Ricky mentioned, you don't want to knockout any of the creativity you come up with but it means nothing if you can't finish it. A project with sensible limitations will be much easier to accomplish well than one with no limitations.

In our discussions about how to make the VL program better, Brad and I kept coming back to the same idea...shorter shorts and more of them. Of course you all are already a small team so you won't have to worry about doing several, but you should focus on making your short short and to the point. For the VL program, we had planned to pitch a new structure for the films, the 2:2:2 Rule. Basically the idea is that your story must conform to 2 characters, 2 sets/environments & must be no more than 2 minutes long.

For the film "Reach" that Ricky linked to in an earlier post, this film has a very simple makeup. There's an outside and inside. There's the main character, the robot, and the secondary character, the bird. There is a human character to trigger the series of events but most of this is done with sound effects(which is a super effective way to add a background character). So far this generally follows our 2:2:2 Rule. Since we're in this room, our main focus is on the robot which is obviously where the majority of the animation work is. The bird has a nice life to him and with clever camera work, there is very little animation that had to be done on him...this is a big PLUS! As Brad mentioned when he saw this, the concept probably started out as a 2-3 minute short and grew from there. Even though it got longer, the new time added still keeps your attention. There's no story points being wasted or overlooked.

I would challenge you all to try and tell a solid story within the idea of our 2:2:2 Rule and see how efficiently you can finish or at least get this production going over the summer. Conceptualize a minute and a half film to give you some "stretch" room for 2 minutes. Create a single character that could be re-purposed by changing its color or using blend shapes(like the Andy rig). Create an environment that's simple and familiar for the audience but is unique through style or design. Think about how you can accomplish a similar result with efficient planning. Use Adobe Premiere to edit with. Look at other films that may be similar to what you want to make and see what makes them good or what makes them bad. These are just a few of the things that I've taken from our experience on Atlas.

Some films that are simple but effective...
http://www.animationmentor.com/newsletter/0109/feature_short.html
http://www.animationmentor.com/newsletter/0509/feature_short.html

I have a few concept ideas for stories that I'd like to share with you, but I want to organize them a bit before I just throw them up here.

I'll end this post with some good story advice I've read recently...
Tell only the story, nothing else. I read a good, simple line the other day and it goes something like this... "Show the audience what they NEED to see." Basically it's not about what you want to show, it's what the audience will HAVE to see to understand what's going on. Show NOTHING ELSE because those extra bits (especially in a short) are what give you 10 minutes of reaction shots, i.e. a film about a ladybug.

Just because you've created this whole world in your head, it doesn't mean that the audience NEEDS to see it, no matter how cool you might think it is.