Week 2, Month 2

Storyboards.

As far a storyboards go these are sort of pre-storyboarding storyboards, just done in my sketchbook to get them done as fast as I could. They are just the essential visual representation of each of the beats. The challenge for me here was to try and not to many extra ideas in. I kept having to remind myself that I just needed to get the bones of it in so that I can build on it as it goes. I purposefully kept elaborate camera angles or detailed poses out so that it can be understood even at this early stage.

It's an interesting debate that goes on in my head about what frames I need to draw right now and which I will remember to put in later. Each frame to me represents an action not just a moment in time. I feel like ideally animation should strive to do this with every frame but especially here when putting the story together I try to find those moments that feel like they already have build up and release with just one image. For instance, on the first page I've drawn the boy coming in from the right and shuffling on to the scene, it's two drawings but for me that foot coming in and then sliding across is all happening in real time. Also in the second page where the boy goes from holding the boxes to the 'wait a sec' finger, to hand in pocket, I wanna get that feeling of snaping between each movement. So there is already a sense of timing in these early drawing that will help me later on to fill out the frames. I'm going to do a of drawings during animation but I still want to make sure I'm not doing too many unnecessary ones, so knowing where the keep movements are help to create a sense of pacing with the piece.

I have started translating these storyboards into a simple animatic, which is where I will fill out some of the actions and framing, etc. In the interest of time I've decided that rather the do all the animation in a sketchy aesthetic, I will work out some keyframes that really need some thinking and some essential inbetweens that will help the keyframes make sense and from that I will dive straight into doing some finished lines. I'm using Photoshop to create the animatic, and while I initially looked into using some of the free or trial versions of industry standard animation software, after finding a very interesting video on how to animate in Photoshop using video layers I've decided that I will do the complete animation in PS. There are plenty of challenges that come with this but I feel like it's going to give a good result while allowing me to concentrate on the technicalities of animation rather that working out a new program.