First Animatic

Character Design

These are my original character designs. This was for my main character 'Gordon', I decided to go with the bald head and stubble, however i feel the stubble makes my character appear too old, and therefor am thinking of scrapping it. I decided to give my character a unique look by adding a 'ball look' chin. This gives a little hint early on as to what will happen in my storyline.

I decided to use flash to help draw my storyboards, this has had its benefits but also its flaws. It has been realy helpfull to easily change round where I want my character in the scene and to help time out my shots, however it doesnt have the 'hands on' feel, when moving pictures around to best suit the order of events. Using my graphics tablet has helped, although to truly see the development of my story, I need to print off all my drawings including my very early on sketches.

Heres an idea of how the drawings have come out:

I was stuck with an ending to my story, however this was soon sorted by introducing a second character. It gives my story more of a flow and something that is going to deliver that final punch line that the audience will hopefullly remember. When looking at an early soundtrack for my animatic i stumbled across two scores that i was very tempted to use, I couldnt decide which one I wanted to use, as they were so different and both fitted well. I therefor decided to use both of the scores at seperate times in the story. The first track really exagerates the mystery and wonder what our character is feeling, and the second more up-beat track really shows us the false sense of confidence he feels half way through. The second track is still watermarked with the website audio, this is because I wanted time to see if I came across a better track, to save wasting money on one I may decide to later scrap.

Here is a start on a schedule I designed to help keep me on target for my deadlines:

This is my first animatic, it is still unfinished towards the end, there are a lot of holds when actions are supposed to be happening, but you get an idea for the storyline. I will update the video as progress continues.

First Ideas

Ive chopped some ideas around about what i wanted out of my film, what i wanted to experiment with and what i wanted to happen in the story line. I made some rough storyboard ideas (which im in the process of putting together so i can place them on here) some of which have changed or been completely scrapped!

My initial thought is that i wanted this film to be quite funny and/or to just get a reaction of somesort out of the audience. This would keep the audience entertained and not get bored of the animation, they would almost feel as if they are a part of it, being fairly involved. I kept to the original idea of one man one room, however after not having a substantial ending to my film, i decided to add a further character at the end. This i feel has rounded the film up perfectly.

I wanted to create an Animation piece that would be remembered if i was to hand my showreel into an agency. I wanted a company to say "hey, do you remember that short about..........." After having my secondary ideas down, and what i felt was a substantial storyboard in place, i started working in the inbetween ideas of transitions. How my character would get from one place to another, or whether it would infact just cut to the next scene.

To help experiment with camera angles i purchased a set of 3d models off 'Turbo Squid', these would help me set up a rough scene together and also save a lot of time in the future with modeling. I would be able to spend more time perfecting the things i wanted to such as rigging and showing off the actual animation, as opposed to rushing to get the models looking reasonably good. The models set me back a meer 80 quid, which i feel in the long run, isnt a bad price to pay for piece of mind.

In my next blog i will show my script and my storyboard outline.

http://www.turbosquid.com/?gclid=COX1uLOjiJ4CFcts4wodfEQfrQ

Test

just a test to see if this works????