18th April

Background Design

This is my draft for the background. This is the key for the colours:

• DB = Dark Blue
• MB = Mid Blue
• LB = Light Blue
• P = Pink
• –> = Gradient

I decided I’m not going to do a straight digital painting, because I don’t think I’d be pleased with the results, and I’d find it more interesting to do something mixed media. Instead I’m going to make two collages, one for each colour in a gradient, and scan them. I’ve got a stack of magazines and I don’t really know how they’re going to turn out exactly, but that’s what makes it fun.

20th April

Here is the collage for the blue/turquoise areas of my background. It was really nice to make, but took a bit of work to get the gradient right. I tore the paper instead of cutting it to get those rough edges, so it would have a handmade look. Someone who saw me making it thought it was supposed to be water, which was an unintentional but useful by-product since it’s for the wall of a swimming pool

Storyboard

I drew my storyboard on paper with using a lightbox, because I felt more comfortable doing that than digital drawing. After receiving feedback on my initial animatic, I added more keyframes to include more acting in the characters. I also changed the angle of the last shot, and drafted a background for the last frame.

Character Design

Jess said I didn’t need to do a turn around for my characters, so this is my design. Both characters are the same shape and proportions, but different sizes. The measurement above are just examples – the ratios next to them are so that it can be scaled up or down for whatever size character.

I’m keeping the faces as simple as possible, so it’s easy to keep them consistent. I’m still figuring out the mouth shapes, so the ones here are just a first draft for now.

Drawing a draft storyboard in thumbnails was useful again, to try out the shots and some basic character shapes. I found it hard to draw bigger, more details versions of the characters that actually looked the way I imagined, even when I tried using real towels as references. So I jumped straight to making models and photographing them instead, like I did for the storyboard rotation at the start of the year. Having my hands on the plasticine and shaping them to try out different positions and expressions was a lot easier for me than drawing them would be. I also had more control over the shots and camera angles, because I wasn’t trying to figure out the perspective from scratch. Then I drew basic facial expressions on the photos and put them into an animatic:

I did it this way round because I wanted to match it up with the audio straight away. Before I started, my original plan was actually to do it in Dragonframe, because then I could import the audio, hold the frames for however long they needed, and essentially have an instant animatic without having to import the photos and sound into Premiere Pro as a separate operation. But I didn’t have all the kit I needed, so I had to do it the long way round. However, I’m definitely going to consider doing something like that in the future.

My plan now is to trace over the photos to create a drawn storyboard, and then I can also import those drawings into Toon Boom to create my keyframes.

Friday 12th April

Character design exercises:

I’ve gone back to the idea of my characters being objects instead of people, and they are now two towels sitting on chairs:

That way, the character design is really simple, but they still have tonnes of potential for animation, as seen above. It think it’ll be fun to figure out how a piece of fabric would express itself.

My scene is now set in an empty cinema (except for the characters). Today I worked on the story and the storyboard

I often find it more helpful to write things out in words before I draw them, so I wrote out the movements and expressions of the characters. I was still feeling hesitant about drawing though, so I started with just planning out the camera angles with in thumbnails underneath. Having these made me feel more confident in drawing the full storyboard.

After finishing the animatic, I realised I’d broken the 180 degree rule. Because of how the Boy turns around to look at the Dad, they are both on the left side of the screen, except for the final shot. However, I don’t think it will be too confusing, because of the setting. When the camera turns to the boy, the room and the seating is reversed as well, so I think it will still be clear where he is looking.