Working title, part 2

So far:
- storyboard is complete
- animatic is complete
- 5 shots of 21 are roughly animated
- music is under development

Looking good.

I’m not going to show the animatic here but you can have some screenshots. They are not in specific order.

Backgrounds are still missing because it depends on the music what they will look like.

This is going to be insanely short animation. Right now the animatic is 1 minute and 10 seconds long. Wow. Of course it will be possible that it will be few seconds longer but that’s still very short.

I decided that half of the animation will be drawn on paper and the other half digitally. I will especially draw those scenes digitally that worked perfectly on animatic. The other scenes that are good but still have some staging problems, I will try to figure out by drawing them on paper.

I would love to draw every single scene on paper but there are many problems with it:

1. Scanning takes too much time.

2. Some of the storyboard’s digital drawings have already perfect keyframes for animation. All they need is some inbetweening and that can be done on computer.

3. When I start to animate on paper I get tensed because my mind keeps telling me that everything has to be done perfectly. I just can’t relax and just work. I had the same problem before when I worked on my first animated short. It has been two years now and I still haven’t got rid of that feeling.

It will be interesting to see if there’s any difference between digitally and traditionally drawn scenes in the final work after the clean-up. Hmm.

And here’s a rough sculpture of the rabbit that I made one night (because obviously the best time to sculpt is nightime!):

The model was made from children’s clay and it has some wire inside to support it. And yes, because it was made from children’s clay it means that it doesn’t dry. At all. But it will be easy to reuse!

Remember when I said that the ears will be tough to animate? Turns out that those are the easiest parts. The thoughest is the head. THE HEAD. What the-

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Previous posts:

Part 1

Animatic

I don't have much time so I'll just write as quickly as possible. Sorry!

I uploaded an animatic on vimeo. You can watch it HERE.

Here's a little background info for this video:

A week ago I was going to a job interview at Finnish animation studio. I cant give you any specific details right now but I was looking for a job as a storyboard artist. Unfortunately, my portfolio didn't include any storyboards. So, I had to do one before the interview.

I really wanted to build a storyboard around a dialogue that had been already recorded. I chose a dialogue from a movie called The Unbreakable (2000, © Touchstone Pictures). Bruce Willis does a great job delivering his lines and somehow manages to be calm, sad and slightly angry at the same time.

In two days I managed to create this animatic. I could have done it faster but I really wanted to capture all the emotion that was going on in that dialogue. And because the scene was very short I had also to think very carefully and make sure that every shot has a meaning.

So yes, I managed to finish it before the interview. How did the interview go? Well, actually I didn't have a right moment to show the video for my employer. So he didn't see it... yet.

Final thoughts:

I am quite pleased with the video. The only downside is the fourth picture. It sort of "breaks" the mood because it seems off.  I showed this animatic to my storyboard teacher and even she agreed with me that there's something odd about it.

If it looks so odd, why did I draw it in the first place? Well, I actually had an idea behind it until later I realised that it didn't work out so well. I'll try to explain what is the idea behind that picture.

In the close-up (3rd picture in the video) the old dog is telling a dark secret to the puppy. The secret is that two human children almost killed him. In this shot he is almost talking to himself to remind himself what happened to him.

In the fourth picture (the picture that I find problematic) the old dog rises his voice and now he is talking to the puppy. We are looking at him from puppy's perspective. That's why he see  the back of his head. He's also trying to avoid looking at the puppy because he is embarrased what happened to him.

And that's my explanation. Sort of.

If anyone has critique or something to say about the video, feel free to write!