Final Animatic - Version 2!

After the critique/initial feedback I received on the 16th January, I asked to speak to tutor, James, to go over my animatic, and there were a lot of areas that needed development in the story. We went through the points, and I understood all the points. I was not happy with the final animatic I handed in on the 16th and knew there were still a lot of story points I needed to change and develop, so the feedback was really useful.

Gemma Roberts helped me go through the new story, laying it out and thinking of composition and shots. Here are the scanned images which Gemma drew, which shows the new storyboard animatic layout. The images Gemma drew are the first two sections of box thumbnails, the thumbnails underneath are ones where I was working on frame layout and composition.

I also met with tutor, Matthew Gravelle, who went through my animatic too, and who also gave me some good points to think about and go through for the new story.

I worked all day Tuesday, so I was able to show Matthew the new animatic on Wednesday. Thankfully, this animatic then worked much more coherently and now there were only a few shots to change or take out. After this, I worked for the rest of the week to finish the new animatic, adding new sounds and finishing the animatic completely.

I am much happier with this story, it is much clearer and I feel much more strongly about the project as a whole.

So here is the Final Animatic - Version 2:

Babbit - Final Animatic - Version 2

I now will send this new animatic to my composer, who I will ask to complete a rough track for it.

As well as this, I will hopefully be able to get a presentation together to show to some prospective first and second year animators who I can ask to help on my film.



-jkl

Part 2 Submission - Feasibility Test, etc...

For the final part of our Pre-Production module hand-in we are required to submit 30 seconds of animations tests, from linetests to full post-production realisation.

I went to the studio every day last week to animated for this deadline, and was able to do three shots. I scanned them all and composed them into a video. Some are more "complete" than others, merely because of time constraints for this hand-in. (Monday 16th)

It was good to start actually animating after all this time on pre-production, and by diving straight into scenes from my final animatic, I was able to fully realise the time I needed on some shots more than others.

The main aspect that caused me difficulty was the hair on Mollie. I was animating her with the hair design I had previously used as the final design. But a few days into animating, I was growing increasingly frustrated with it, and I felt it was hindering each drawing, making it look too static and dead. I therefore changed the hair, made the line flow simply down, resting upon her head, but still in the same "bob" formation. It looked much more natural, and above all, felt much better to draw and animate with! The contriving feelings lifted instantaneously, and I went back and changed the longest scene I was working on to show this new hair design all the way through. This can be seen in the video (link below). As well as showing this hair scene with the new hair design, I have also showed the original hair design to show the comparison. Unfortunately, I did not get time to go back and change the other tests that still had the original hair design, but if these tests are received good enough for the final film, I will then go back and change the hair.

Hair Design Before:

Hair Design After:

Link to the Feasibility Animation Tests:

Feasibility Animation Tests (Vimeo)



---jkl

Final Animatic [Clean]

 Over the Christmas holidays, I was able to draw the shots from my animatic again in Photoshop, as 'Part 2' of our hand-in requires a "clean and more detailed" animatic. I decided to draw and colour the frames in a purple colour scheme in line with the final colour plan as described in earlier posts.

 There were a few aspects I needed to change from presenting the rough animatic to my tutors on the 12th December.

These were:
- In the teacher scene, the angle where the teacher's shadow appears on Babbit needs to be changed back to the first angle used in the first animatic.

- The background/overall colour visualisations need something more. The idea for having purple coloured characters on purple backgrounds might not work and you need to test this. Perhaps add more colours in the backgrounds?

-The montage scene (time-lapse) in the middle needs to be shown more clearly in the next animatic.


 Also, over the holidays I was able to visit my composer. I showed him the rough animatic (as I had not completed the clean animatic by then) and we discussed the sort of music I would like and what mood I wanted to get across. He said that he couldn't really come up with a track until the animation was all done and the film was timed out. So this has given me a deadline to work to in that I must finish and compile the animation by mid-late April to be able to give enough time for my composer to compose and record the final track. It won't matter at this point if it's not all coloured, he just wants the timing to be finalised so he can work with the emotional beats more effectively. So my time management is of the utmost importance to be able to achieve this.

Here is the final Clean Animatic:

Babbit Animatic [Clean]

I didn't change much else in the final animatic, though there may be a few things that need altering throughout the process, but I will wait until the next feedback session before I decide on anything, as I now need to focus on the rest of the work needed for the 'Part 2' hand-in (due the 16th January), which in itself requires:

- 30 seconds of Animation/Feasibility tests.
- 1000 word Working Life-Industry Report
- 500 word Self-Reflexive Report
- Professional Practise work - Business Card designs, full and up-to-date CV, website links to portfolio, etc
- Final Clean Animatic

Here are the pages of drawings done for the clean animatic:

I tried to embellish some actions where I could. I wanted to show more actions in places, but it just wasn't possible in the time period we have been given to complete this. Therefore, some scenes are not as clear as they should or could be. Also, the last few frames were done on a separate document and were not saved in PNG form, these will be uploaded as soon as possible.

---jkl