Post 8 - Week Update

After a talk with both Neil and Peter, I've now decided to go down the pathway of being a storyboard artist. I feel as though I want to draw the poses to tell a story rather than spend my time animating them, because I have so many ideas that I want to get down, and I'm confident about my ability to capture a scene in my head and draw it in the form of a storyboard.

For a task I had been set by Neil, I had to storyboard an action piece, such as a scene from a film, so I took one of my original ideas and did just this.

The scene is about a soldier called Hanley who works for this man, the Master Alystaire, who locates this family living in a derelict house who are fugitives and running from his laws. They find the family and trap them in the house. The Master then orders the house to be burnt down with the family still alive inside. He tells Hanley and two of the others to stay and keep watch to make sure they don't escape. Hanley's conscience overwhelms him however, who despite being trained to strictly follow and obey orders, rushes into the house and saves them, much to the other two soldier's astonishment, and they reluctantly help to save the family as well. But as one of the family member's is saved, another is trapped in the attic and the fire leaves only one option of escape, through a glass window. As they fall to the ground outside, the family and reunited and are told to leave quickly and escape before the Master comes back. As the soldiers return to their fort, they are secretly spied by the Master's ally who reports the incident back to him.

This is my idea, which I have already drawn out and got feedback for, and I was told that although I had a natural instinct to view a scene and draw it out, I should make use of the 'camera' more by not cutting the scene as much, but instead to use a shot that follows the character if they were running towards it. As well as that, I should make it more detailed so as to know which character is which.

In terms of presentation, I should look into PDF formats or set up a folder so as to scroll through the shots quickly.

Post 7 - Anchorman Animatic

Anchorman animatic test:

Post 6 - Anchorman Storyboard

Here are the storyboards for the "Achorman" sound clip:

http://www.moviesoundclips.net/sound.php?id=82

Post 5 - Week Update

As I haven't been very well for the past 2 weeks, I haven't been as productive as I would have liked to have been, but I have been thinking about what it is that I want to do. For the past few days I have taken a liking to Storyboarding, and I feel that this is something that I wanted to do as a serious career pathway, because I personally think that I am good at capturing expressions, but I don't feel that I want to go into animating. As an example, I have storyboarded the "achorman" sound clip that I wasn't initially going to do, but without character design, I haven't detailed the figures, so I just sketched it as I would have expressed them to act.

Post 4 - Madagascar Character Designs

Initial character designs, these are what I have planned for my animation. I know that they may change slightly from critique and feedback, but I decided on these for the voices that I'm going to use in my animation.

The story is that a Captain and two other survivors are walking along a beach and the guy behind (the Navigator) is trying to apologise. Just as he's about to, he's interrupted as the Captain "shh's" him when he hears something. The Navigator then turns to the woman behind and complains. The woman tries to explain that the Captain is upset, but again the Captain "shh's" the woman to try and hear. The woman doesn't like this and tells him so.

This character is a "Captain" character, where he's a leader and in command of the group. He will be at the front leading the others as they walk. I chose a simple Royal Navy inspired design and a single trouser leg is ripped from the ship wreck. I gave him a stern look and cold blue hair to match.

This is the design for the Navigator. I gave him a head scarf and a neck scarf as the traditional sailor outfit has. His clothes were based a lot off the sailors from Disney's "The Little Mermaid" 

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7adnueZ2gZz_AmUpmL54ucsIwfQvnQbxV9G9c9Leg1W6__nkegu0UXOYG6tKAD_OXr_scpqtCZ_cC1MWvshyphenhyphenOLGflT1RtA_3echv2h9MUgdPaX6jp-QWl6QPV2HtMviwmSaq-3XM5dzSo/s400/01-2.jpg

I did however loose the stripe design as I felt that it was just a simple animation and I didn't want to complicate the process.

And this is the design for the woman, to whom I tried to give a soft appeal to her as well as make her a little bossy. I initially decided to have her hair pink, but I felt that it was a bit too outstanding, so I tried several different colours before settling for lilac. Her dress colour was also an issue, and I had thought of giving her a yellow dress, but again it was too outstanding and "in your face". I settled with red as it gives a feminine but bold personality. 

Post 3 - Madagascar Animatic

Here is the rough animatic using the images from my storyboard put to the sound file to test the timing:

Post 2 - Madagascar Storyboard

I have decided to go with the Madagascar sound clip for my animation piece as it's 11 seconds which isn't too long to animate, and it's a good piece to test out my expression skills. Although the Anchorman sound clip appealed to me, I felt that it was too long to do, and there were instances where I couldn't really think of what to think of when it can to actions, but mainly it was the time issue.

I have already made a start with the storyboarding, shown below.

Next I shall put the images into a rough draft animatic to see how it would look along side the sound