Animatic

Story Notes

Animatic

Ryan suggested we create a 3D animatic, instead of going down the traditional hand drawn storyboard look, having never done a 3D Animatic before I decided to give it a go, it also meant the whole group could have input as some members are not as fond of drawing. Below are the 3D shots I did.

The 3D animatic didn’t really sell the emotional aspect of the story that we wanted to achieve. I thought a 2D animatic would read better also. I came forward to the team about my concerns for the 3D animatic, most agreed with me so the decision to draw out the animatic was made. Me and Nathan were to work on it together. We decided that drawing out very rough shots and then discussing and comparing them with the rest of the group would be best before drawing them on photoshop. Below are my drawings. I tried to incorporate a number of aspects we had talked about including a time-lapse, the knocking sound, cup of tea, a sense of repetition etc.

About a quarter of the way through, Nathan decided to just let me do the rough storyboards as he wanted to work on more character and house concepts. I showed the drawings above to the group, they were happy with how they turned out so I went ahead and drew them out properly on photoshop, which you can see below. I then sent Ryan the images and he edited the sequence and added sound. Pixars new short animation gave me inspiration for how our character approaches the water.

For the ending scene I referred a lot to Daniels 3D storyboards that we had done before because I think it showed it well. Also Ryan’s script helped me to incorporate some of his ideas into the storyboards as well.

 

 

 

 

I drew all of the below for the animatic based on my initial thumbnail storyboards

The feedback up to this point has been extremely helpful and well received, it is great to know how the audience sees our piece of work as it progresses. As a result of feedback we are more aware of which way the project has to go, we have decided to make the story very open to interpretation, with our character a blank slate everyone could relate to.

In relation to the feedback; less is more, I decided to cut back our animatic to see if it still made sense with less scenes, and to my surprise it still reads really well!

 

Animatic Draft03

In Animatic Draft 04 I lengthened the shots to help with the emotion of the short film, I cut other shots and scenes away, as well as integrating new shots and concept artwork from both myself and Nathan.

Not Happy

With the amount of feedback and cutting we had done to the animatic in the weeks following the first animatic, I felt we had lost our story narrative and purpose. The knock became more annoying, the character didn’t make sense, and we weren’t sure what we wanted to convey anymore.
I showed Daryl Animatic04 above, at the end he said he was confused as to what exactly made the character leave the house. He gave me some helpful suggestions such as a peephole for the door-in which the character sees the real world and not the ocean.

Although this was pretty late into the project, I approached my team with my reasoning and suggested we needed to re-evaluate our animatic completely. It was a daunting suggestion, however Nathan and Daniel both pointed out that they also didn’t like the animatic, which was quite frustrating to hear. I’ve learnt from this experience that I need to trust my gut and although I said how I felt about the animatic a couple of times, I really need to push my opinion more, especially if I feel strongly about it and hope we can resolve the issue. Ryan especially seems to be pushing to start production, and although it is extremely important we do that, getting the story perfect should be the main focus and I feel I am the only team member trying to push this and keep at it, most of the group seemingly lose interest in the animatic, and it seems that I need to be present in order for any work to go ahead on it even though it should be a team effort.

Firstly we needed to understand our character completely. We decided that he is a man in this mid 30’s who has lost his job, some time has past and he is struggling to keep living in his house. As a result he is suffering from depression and loneliness. We are not sure what he has lost in the process of unemployment but we are hinting at a relationship as he has a double bed and a large sofa.

Secondly we needed to know whether the character leaves the house or not throughout the film (excluding the ending which hasn’t changed). We have decided that the character should remain inside the house until the end. It will make the audience wonder why he isn’t going outside to this wonderful view and ask why he is so scared of it.

Thirdly, we needed to know what the ocean means to our character, is it an escape/dream for our character? Or is it a representation of his mental state? We concluded that the ocean representing his mental state would explain our story a lot better and allow it to have a deeper meaning.

We want to emphasis how uncomfortable the house is for the character, even though he can’t seem to leave, with cool colours and low lighting, contrasted by the brightness outside. We especially want to intensify the comfortableness of his bedroom, Ryan suggested we do so by using a different focal length for the camera and slightly dutch angling it, I think this is a really good idea.

With the house modelled by Ryan, we have decided to go down the 3D animatic route again, although it didn’t work the first time I believe because we have a structured house and interior now that it will be better to do it in 3D. Others in the group would much rather use 3D models to represent our character but I would much rather draw as it is a faster method for me.

Me Daniel and Nathan started to plan out our shots below.

Mike then came in and suggested a few really interesting shots we hadn’t thought of before.

These shots below are me playing about with dividing spaces, camera focal lengths and outside to inside perspectives.

New Animatic

Nathan and I spent 2 days getting a new animatic together. Going through shot by shot. It was exhausting work as we needed to remember everything we wanted the project to be and to stick with it

Part One

Here is the first half of the animatic I edited together and added our character into.

Animatic 05

Nathan and my edit together and Daniel added the sound

 

To the left is the feedback received from Niamh and Rachel. We as a team have learned that someones opinion isn’t the be all and end all. As criticism we have received from the start really influenced the project only to be scrapped later and time wasted. However it is nice to hear someones opinion, just be cautious when taking it on.

 

 

 

Ryans Edit-Draft06

Draft 07

Ryans final edit of the animatic, we took some shots out and reduced it by 30 seconds.This was the last draft as there was now no time to change anything as the animation had begun.

Evaluation

I am still not 100% happy with the animatic, although it is much better than before and I’m glad I pushed both myself and my team to create a new one.

At some points there was a breach in the 180 degree rule within film. I didn’t notice it because I was focusing so much on getting the animatic finished at the time. Watch the video below though helped me understand it a bit more.