Rough Animatic From My Initial Storyboard

Yesterday I posted the first draft of my storyboard to the blog. Today, I decided to create an animatic from this storyboard in order to see how well the frames work when viewed as a video with the correct timing (or at least as correct as it can be at this stage of development):

I am pleased with this animatic in that I am confident that the images from the storyboard are easy to read, and the general framing and layout of shots work well from a cinematographic perspective. I am however less happy with the timing of the piece as a whole; the entire animatic feels slightly too fast and many shots would benefit from being left to linger briefly before cutting to the next scene/action.

This animatic was simply a quick test to make sure the shots work and that my story makes sense visually, so I don't feel it is necessary to update this piece to be 100% correct. Clearly, however, when I come to make my final animatic for this piece, I must pay more attention to the timing of each shot, and ensure that the piece lasts longer than this animatic.

Rough Storyboard of my Initial Idea

Below is a rough thumbnail storyboard for the animation I intend to make at the end of the module. The piece is based upon the inspiration I gathered while I putting together images for the mood-board I posted earlier on in the blog. While I was searching for images to inspire me, I found I was naturally gravitating towards themes of baron landscapes and isolation; this is reflected quite strongly in my storyboard.

For the story itself, I was really interested in the idea of the unseen journey; the exciting and wild things that happen everyday that we don't even notice. My main character owns a small shop in the middle of nowhere that sells extreme tours, yet ironically nobody ever comes to visit. However as soon as the owner leaves his shop, the building goes on an extreme journey of its own, only to have returned by the time the owner returns. In summary, every day is a journey and every day has the potential to be exciting if you know where to look.

I am yet to decide upon timings for each of the shots in the storyboard, however I aim to produce a quick animatic in order to determine how long each panel should last.

Character and Background Design Session

In this week's session, we experimented with the use of digital collage in order quickly and efficiently generate concept images to a written specification. We began with a description of a character, who to my mind came across as being a callous, elderly man with spider-like proportions:

...and the image below was produced to the specification of a dystopian future in which nature has reclaimed the Earth's landscape:

I really enjoyed this method of producing imagery for an idea; primarily as it requires a fairly minimal understanding of the concept you are trying to develop, thus making it ideal for a fresh project. The use of existing imagery really helps to generate solid imagery, rich in depth and texture, that would be extremely difficult to achieve if one was to try and draw the same idea from scratch on a blank page. I'm sure this technique will be helpful when I come to developing my animation for this module.

Experimenting with Moodboards

Since the last lecture, I have been experimenting with moodboards by using websites such as Pinterest and Getty (As suggested by Emma Landolt during her Skype talk) to collect relevant images which might help inspire an idea for the animated piece that I will be developing for this module. In order to locate images, I  searched for the various synonyms and concepts from the spider diagram which I poster earlier on in this blog. Once I had collected a fairly large number of images, I began to sort them into categories (e.g. 'nature' or 'the middle of nowhere') before using the best images to produce the following moodboards:

This process has helped me to clarify what kind of concepts I am most interested in pursuing in terms of developing my animation. Clearly I am very interested in the idea of wide open isolated spaces with just one or two features appearing in the baron landscape. I was particularly inspired by the small hut with the 'Fishing' sign; I really like the idea of having a tourist attraction in the middle of nowhere.

Above are some quick sketches I made after finding the image of the hut. The way it's so precariously placed on the edge of a cliff brought to mind the idea that the hut itself might fall off and go on a journey of its own - I this idea struck me as quite interesting as I don't think I would have otherwise considered the potential for the 'main character' of my animation to be an inanimate object.

Mood-Boarding Session

In this week's lecture we looked into the use of mood-boards as a way of presenting ideas and gathering inspiration for a project. We began the session with an exercise in quickly producing mood-boards to convey our perceptions of two scenarios - the first was about a news-caster who finishes work, drives home in his sports car and has a candle lit meal with his wife in their fancy house:

The second was about Queen Elizabeth I sentencing a pair of criminals to be beheaded after acts of treason:

Following this exercise we received a talk from a Emma Landolt, a senior creative at Drive Productions. Emma discussed with us the importance of mood-boards and how they can benefit the creative process in ways such as helping you 'get everything out of your head' or to quickly and easily assess what a client likes and what they don't like (this point struck me as being particularly important).

We were told that Emma begins her mood-boards by simply browsing image sharing websites such as Getty or Pinterest, saving relevant images into a series of folders sorted by what the images represent before going into each folder and only keeping the best images until there are just 10 or so images left per mood-board. This selective process helps narrow down what you really want out of your project. The mood-boards I created above were produced using images from
Examples of Emma's mood-boards along with information about last year's R&D talk can be found here.

Below are examples of mood-boards I found online that I find inspiring:

Images flow together really well through use of a limited colour palette. Overlapping images give a close and cozy feel very homely, the colours convey a calm mood which adds to this.

I like the layout here. Again the palette is limited which helps the images connect, yet they all seem more separate as they don't overlap; could be good for themes such as isolation or to imply distance between things; this compliments the imagery used here.

Brainstorming Ideas

Today I spent some time brainstorming around the concept of the word 'journey'; the word which will be the 'genesis point' for the piece I create at the end of this module.

I began my brainstorming by simply trying to sit down and quickly sketch my immediate idea of what 'journey' meant to me:

A quick sketch to get down my immediate thoughts on the word 'journey'

My immediate thought on the word journey was that life in itself is a journey as we develop from one state of life to another, e.g. baby to toddler. I had thought it was a pretty good way of looking at the word 'journey' until I stopped drawing and looked at it; at which point it just looked morbid and cliched. At this point I found myself questioning what a journey really is, so I created a spider-diagram to help further my understanding of the word:

A thought cloud based around the word 'Journey'

I began by looking up the dictionary definition of 'journey': 'an act of travelling from one place to another'. I then looked at how the meaning of the word could be expanded upon by looking up some synonyms. Many of the synonyms were just different ways of travelling such as 'cruise' or 'fly', however some words really caught my interest as I might not otherwise have come up with them; such as 'pilgrimage' or 'safari' - less vanilla words that spur the imagination help bring strong imagery to mind.

After I had gained a better idea of what the word journey means and looked into words associated with it, I had a look at some news headlines to see if any stories could be described as a journey in some way. I was surprised to find that almost all the headlines I saw could have been described as a journey in some way (come to think about it, aren't all stories we tell about a character's journey?). One headline featured 'surfing dogs' - this one really stuck me, as in just two words there's a method of travel - the literal part of the journey - as well as a statement that immediately makes you think about the back story and the journey that must have happened in order for the dogs to end up surfing; whether this is a literal or metaphorical.

I've definitely improved my understanding of the word 'journey' through these exercises and the spider diagram should come in very handy when I come to the next stage of development: producing mood-boards.

Welcome To My Blog!

The purpose of this blog is to document my progress over the course of the 'Research and Development for Animation' module.

Research and development in animation refers to the range of processes carried out during the pre-production stage of animation. The aim of the module is to carry out my own research and development for a piece of animation, up to the point that the piece would effectively be ready to go into full production; my starting point for the piece is the word 'Journey'.

I will be updating this blog each week, detailing my progress throughout the 'Research and Development for Animation' module. This will include posts about what has inspired me over the course of the module, along with work produced towards my proposed animation - including sketches, mood-boards and storyboard frames.