Extended Practice - Starting my Project

After turning down the work on the music video project, due to missed deadlines, I started on my own project. The first thing that I did, was flesh out my own story, as I had the basic idea from the pitch, but it had no real substance. One thing I had to keep in mind was that I needed to keep it short, as I had less time than anyone else. So when writing it out, I cut out a lot of stuff from the initial story idea.

This was the document that I put together to tell my story. It included my initial mood board and also the initial story idea which I had come up with in my planning stage. In consideration of my time left, I needed to split the story up into separate parts. So I set it up as the main fight scene, which would be my main animation, and the story set up, which in my mind was integral to the story, but not necessary for it to make sense. Therefore I wanted to make this my plan for the rest of production time, so that in the chance that I could not get the animation done in time, I could split it into the two sections and have the fight scene stand on it's own. 

My next stage from here was to make the script, as it is a necessary part of production, and is incredibly useful to storyboard from.

 

This was the script that I put together using my story overview. From here I decided to ask for feedback from my peers which lead to me revising the script to make some shots a bit more clear, and to help the flow of the story. 

Extended Practice - Music Video Project

Directly on the back of the 3D project, it was time to move on to a different project entirely. I started off very excited for this project, as it was going to be something which I timed myself in a very animated storyboard. On first meeting with the Director of this project, this was dwindled, as I found that the script had not been completed, and there was not enough for me to work off. Therefore to help speed up the process, we sat down together and discussed some visual styles for the storyboards. This is what I came up with:

From here, I gave a list of things which the Director of this project had to give me by Monday 4th February, this included:

1.  Script finalised and formatted
2. Initial Character Sketches
3. Inspirations and Mood Boards

It came to my and none of these things had been given to me. Following this further it appeared as though a rough storyboard had been done by the Director of the project without a finished script, as a sort of stand in. I asked again for the script and I was given a google drive link for me to look at. 

The script showed promise however a lot of things had not been considered, and therefore I made the suggestion that he talk to a tutor to get feedback on the story and I made my own comments and edit suggestions on this google drive link. I have given a new deadline of Sunday 11th February to have the script completed and the other resources I need to be shared or I will move on from the project. 

Extended Practice - "Red and Green" Photoshop Storyboards

After my attempt with 3D and storyboard pro's technical issues, I decided to move on to Photoshop and start the boards again. I did not want to lose consistency within scenes therefore I determined it was just easier to start again.

Due to Photoshop's superior drawing functionality, this panel came out a lot clearer than in the Storyboard Pro version. At this point I had also seen the finished character designs, I was no longer working on the rough sketches, so the storyboards became a lot more on model with the final animation than the previous version had been. I continued in this way for the rest of the time storyboarding on this project. I knew I had added way more many frames than I needed for this board, and therefore decided to put what I had in to premier to see where I could improve on the following frames, and how I could increase my work flow. This is the test of that:

What became painstakingly obvious, was that I needed to decrease the amount of frames I was adding in to each scene, because it was making the flow of work a lot slower than it could be, and I was already behind in this storyboard, as I had already undergone some technical issues. I believe I did this effectively, and have now finished the storyboards for this project. Here is the final result, it is not timed therefore the movement is quite slow, however this is due to the Director asking for all of the panels so that he could time it himself. 

Overall, I am happy with how this storyboard came out, I believe it is readable, and the comedy is there, which was an important part of this project. Due to technical issues, it became a hassle in the middle, but I pulled it back quite well, and was only a couple of days behind my original schedule with where I wanted this board to be. In future I will try and test the elements I am unsure of on a separate document before starting on the final thing, and to make sure I can do what I set out to do. My workflow greatly increased when moving to Photoshop, so that overall I was working on these storyboards for a total of 8 days, which was a bit longer than the previous project. 

My next project is a 2D animated music video, so I will use what I have learned from the last three storyboards to make sure I make a decent storyboard on schedule. I have a bit more time to play with in this next one as it is my last outsourcing project to work on. 

Extended Practice - "Red and Green" 3D Tests/Failed Animatic

After  completing the thumbnails, it was time to move on to the storyboards and animatic portion of the process. For this, I wanted to storyboard in Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, as I had done on "Bedtime", the previous project I had worked on, but with 3D assets to assist me with this.

This is what that version of the animatic looked like, I tried to use the 3D elements to my advantage, but as it happened it took a lot longer to mix the 3D assets with hand drawn panels, therefore I went back to the Director and offered and alternative, in which I would hand draw the entire storyboard.

This was the alternative I gave the Director to show that it could look just as good if drawn 2D, to which he agreed, and I began the process completely hand drawn. Although, the program seemed to develop a problem in the update that happened around this time, where I was unable to see onion skin layers, and therefore it became an increasing pain to draw on to the board, as I was unable to see the previous frame.

As is shown here, in the top right corner, the onion skin is activated, however there is no layer appearing. After this I decided that it was just taking far too long to storyboard in this way, and I opted for a different approach yet again. This would mean taking longer with the storyboards, however it would greatly increase my work flow per day, as I wouldn't have to work around the technical problems.

This was what the animatic originally looked like, done in storyboard pro, as is shown here I got a decent way in to the process, however the workflow was just far too slow for my liking, and from this point I continued storyboarding from the beginning in Photoshop. I wanted to start from the beginning for consistency with the shots, as I would not doubt frame everything differently on a different program.

Extended Practice - "Red and Green" Thumbnails

As I had finished with my previous outsourcing on a live action storyboard, it was now time to move on to my next project, working on the 3D project "Red and Green". I knew when I started this that I wanted to storyboard this using 3D assets in the background, so that I could get a clear idea of space, and consider how the character's moved around that space.

I stared off the week with thumbnails, which was based on the script which was provided to me by the Director of the project. It was specified where there were some meticulous shots which the group wanted, however over all I was given a pretty free reign with what I could do. I knew it was a slapstick comedy, so I tried to push the funny expressions and kept the camera quite simple so as to not overshadow the comedy which is happening on screen. Here are the thumbnails for this project:

Proceeding this, there was some changes made by the Director of the project, but ultimately he was happy with where I took the character's and how I chose to utilise them in each scene.