SPnU Revised Storyboards

Prathik, Damo and I sat down together and reviewed the boards and made some changes so we were able to cut out a few unnecessary backgrounds and scenes. I started writing down the notes on the side but my handwriting’s not the best, I’ll neaten it up at some point.

The revised boards looks like this now:

What worked well:

• Cutting out the boards that had the drawer zoom-ins

What could be improved:

• The thumbnails will need writing
• Animatics with placeholder sounds will be the next step

Monkey Jam! Loop De Loop

I made a looping monkey playing the steel drums for this month's LoopDeLoop which was themed 'Instruments'. The follow through movements took me some time to figure out in the roughs stage:

This is also the first time I fully animated something in TVPaint (though I did use After Effects to add some subtle moving leaf shadows) and I'm pleased with how it turned out! I'm hoping this marks the first of many TVPaint animations as I believe it'll be useful to me as a 2D animator.

The loop made it onto the site

What worked well:

• As I'm not strong with colours, I colour picked a Rayman Origins background which I thought worked really well for this background
• The use of arcs and follow through on the monkey movements
• The smears when the monkey swaps sides

What could be improved:

• An extra frame or two might've helped the transition clearer between the sides when the monkey swaps his legs
• A few extra background sounds could've been added for the jungle ambience and the monkey swapping sides.

SPnU Storyboards first pass

This week I’ve started boarding the animation properly.

I’ve been trying to minimise how many backgrounds are needed where it’s possible but it’s looking like a lot so far. Halli has kindly agreed to make our backgrounds and in return we are helping animate his Medusa project.

I’m also starting to worry that the story will go well over two minutes and might be too much work for us as I the whole storyboard comprises of 66 panels as it is. I’ve raised this with Prathik and we’ll all sit down together at some point and tweak the boards.

These are the thumbnails so far:

 

 

The time spent into making the Maya room was well worth it as it’s taken considerably less time than expected to draw out the boards with the layout done.

Main Project - Sleep Paralysis and You

Over the break, Damian, Prathik and myself decided to try to continue our Schwa collective into this year and after graduation. Prathik had a list of ideas he thought would be good to animate as a collective and the one that stuck out to everyone was about a sleep paralysis demon that craved intimacy. The original script had a comedic twist ending but after getting some feedback from Dotty, we changed it into a horror-romance-tragedy story.

My role for this project is storyboarding, animatic, animation and some post production. I started drawing the storyboards and then realised almost immediately I didn’t really know where the furniture was in relation to the character so I thought it would be easier to block it out in Maya and take screenshots (which would help the background artist too). I started a Maya file and then realised I didn’t know what the layout of the room was supposed to be.

After going through a few potential floor plans with Prathik (who is directing), we picked one and I spent about a week or so making a basic room in Maya. I was a little rusty with the program but Prathik and Rory were kind enough to remind me how to do some basic actions.

Floorplan

Room blocked out in Maya

What I learned:

• Sometimes more creative planning is needed before the storyboard stage
• Making a floor plan and blocking out in Maya helps out both the storyboard artist and the background artist in retrospect

The next stage will be getting the storyboards done.