Extended Practice - Live Brief - Godzilla Talenthouse Artwork

For another of my live brief's, I decided to take part in the Talenthouse Godzilla : King of the Monsters artwork submission. I would usually choose an animation or storyboard brief to do, however as Godzilla is such an important topic for me, having inspired a lot of my creative endeavours.

Godzilla Trailer

This was the material I had to use for inspiration, so I chose to go with Godzilla facing off against King Ghidorah, which I had done storyboards of previously, and I felt comfortable that I could pull it off. This is the progression of my piece, from thumbnail to final piece. 

Overall I am really happy with how this turned out, and I used the titles provided by the competition, and submitted both versions, as you are allowed up to 8 submissions. I decided, in response to feedback to get rid of the fire behind on the buildings as it would be too distracting. I wanted some strong blue lighting as that seems to be the theme of all of the marketing for the movie. I do not usually go for a finished piece, and I feel like it works well, I am especially happy with the atmosphere of the piece, I will try and improve on my general drawing skills from here on, as I think it would look a bit more 3 dimensional. 

Extended Practice - Responding to Feedback

After receiving feedback from professionals, I have reworked my animatic to make the necessary changes to my story and to cuts to make sure that it is readable and cohesive. I tried to take on all the feedback I received, and I feel that I responded to it relatively well. Here are the scenes I improved:

This is the first revision:

With this first revision, the concern was that the cut from the hero character landing to the next shot was a bit jumpy, so I added in an extra insert of him landing and ready to fight, which showed more of his character and helps the cut to the next shot feel a bit more natural.

Revision 2:

This revision adds more character to the monster on his approach, I gave the monster more intent behind his approach, adding in a small victorious roar and a close  up insert before he jumps towards the hero, showing that the monster believes it has won at this point. I also wanted to show that the monster is angry with the character, thus the angry close up insert, possibly territorial? I think this helps the shot a lot with it's intent and showing the character's emotions.

Revision 3:

A couple of minor revisions, the most prominent being the character's head, he now looks towards the gun so that the next cut makes a bit more sense, so that his eye leads the transition. The next couple of things was the flipping of the monster looking down on the hero, it now reads better with the monster's screen direction being consistent between shots.

Revision 4:

This is definitely the most significant of changes to the story, with the entire ending being different. Originally I had staged the shot as though the monster was lunging down and the shot was revealed through the monster's head, however now I have the shot directly leading into itself with the gun coming into the scene and visibly shooting the monster on his lunge down, showing the damage, and setting up for the next scene where he falls, and the hole falls on to the hero character, inspired by many different classic scenes where the hero then emerges from the hole, and stumbles out to fall next to the monster.

I also changed the close up scene to reflect this, as he is now giving a sigh of relief, up against the head of the dead monster. He then hears an audible roar, which causes his relief to turn to surprise, at which he climbs up the monster, and the camera tracks him up to reveal the other 3 monsters, at which point he leaps into action again.

Here is how the full thing reads now:

I am much happier with the flow of the story now, I think the professional feedback has helped greatly with the action and flow of the short. It is now slightly longer but the shots that are there, are all necessary for the intent of the characters.

Extended Practice - Professional Feedback

After finishing my rough pass of my animatic, I sent it off to 2 highly regarded storyboard artists in order to gain some professional feedback. This is the feedback given by Jez Hall:

This was all incredibly useful feedback which I will respond to accordingly. It felt very professional and I got the feeling that he took me seriously as a board artist so I was appreciative of that.

Here is the feedback given by David Bunting:

I liked the critical nature both these professionals treated my board with, I did not want a series of compliments as I would not have felt like there could be any improvements, however this feedback has given me a lot of good insight into what I need to improve, and how I can make it a lot better.

Over the next couple of days I will pick up the pace a lot more and I will make the suggested improvements, some of which were solidifying some of the thoughts which I had already had, but some of which I just hadn't considered.

Extended Practice - Clean-up Tests

As I was waiting for feedback, I decided to start cleaning up the shots which I was the most happy with, as I was pretty confident in them, and I also had backgrounds for them already.

I used shot 1 as my starting point for this, of which I started by adding in and lining up the background where it needed to go.  This is that test: 

The background works incredibly well and really elevates the scene, the background artist stuck to my layout beautifully and it really helps bring the characters to life. I was so happy with this when the background was in that I decided to clean up the rest of the shot just to have it done. Here is that version: 

I am incredibly happy with how this shot turned out, I think it really adds a lot to the shot having his hair in, and also giving him the expression as it gives a sense of character. The same goes for the monster, adding in some facial detail makes him a lot more aggressive and the subtle mouth openings make him feel more alive. Ultimately I am happy with this shot, and I do not have to do anything more with it now, so I will move on to finishing off the other shots when I have gotten some feedback on how they could be improved. 

Extended Practice - Storyboard Progression 3

After the crit session last week, I had pointed out to myself that there needed to be some amendments to my animatic, such as flipping shots to make the flow of the story more coherent. I have also now finished what I am calling the "rough pass" of my animatic, which I will send off for feedback from some of my connections from PP. I will also try and get feedback from my class so that I can make sure it reads well before I start making a clean pass. I will start a clean pass of the first shot as I am confident in it, and I do not want to change it as I personally think it works well enough on it's own.

This is my rough pass:

I am quite happy with how some of this has worked out, I have forgotten to flip the close up shots of the monster here so it is making those cuts look pretty jumpy, which I will amend this coming week. I have the bliss of being able to take my time on this animatic, as if it were a longer film, I would have had to have a final rough pass by this stage. I also want to work on fixing up the ending shot, as I think it could be amended to give a little more emphasis on the monsters death, as there is a long build up with little pay off, so I think I could push that a little more.

I am also wondering whether the cut at around the 06:05 mark to the landing shot needs an insert shot first, as it may be causing a little bit of a jump in the cut. The ending shot also may be a little too similar to the opening shot in terms of how he moves, so I feel that that could be amended to read a little better for the audience.

Extended Practice - Storyboard Progression 2

Following on from Hostelworld, I knew it was time to get back into my own project, so I started again with my animatic. There is not too much to say about what is happening, there has just been some progress on shots, with some revisions in places where stuff doesn't quite make sense, I have a couple more shots to rough out before I start cleaning up, and I will try and get some feedback before I clean-up so I won't have to scrap anything that is particularly time consuming.

During my crit session, I noticed that at 09:12, the animatic sort of breaks the 180 rule, almost, and doesn't is making the cut quite jumpy, I will amend this going forward. This will also mean I have to revise the close up shots of the monster, and easy fix as I will just have to flip the shots. Flipping this shot also means I can establish to the audience that he is still holding the gun after being hit, this will make it read more clearly ultimately and will help with the pacing.