Summary of the Unit

The aim of this Unit was to translate the essential core of a story and develop these key areas into storyboards and then an animatic. Since our story had no narrative we did not develop a screenplay but took the ideas straight from the source material, through storyboards to the animatic. We simplified the storyline of the source material to include only 3 death scenes as this provided us with a more equal distribution of work between the group members and avoided excess repetition.

Each group member produced storyboards and created animatics. I had to develop ideas for my parts of the story and I tried to include things that I had learnt during this Unit, for example creating interesting camera angles.

This is a good type of project for group work because you can bounce ideas off each other especially when you get stuck, for example my transform scene. As we all produced separate parts to the story I think there will be problems with narrative flow and different art styles. I have learnt more about the software and developed my skills. I have begun to realise the importance of telling a cohesive story and how scenes are set up.

Blog Links
Group Blog       -     http://eltigrenegro.tumblr.com/

Derek Ho          -     http://animaticstoryboard.tumblr.com/

Juwad Malik      -     http://juwadmalik5.tumblr.com/

Jasmin Castrioty  -    http://storyboards-animatics.tumblr.com/

My Animatic Movies

Word gets around.

In this scene I was trying to depict someone telling a crowd of people and then this information spreading. I found this idea very hard to convey, it is a serious scene but I think that it looks quite comical as it is. I wish I could have drawn it better. I may have been able to improve it if I had more time. but it is only an animatic and I hope that it gets the idea across.


Party death scene

In this scene the panther is attacking and killing one of his murderers. Out of all my scenes it is my favourite and longest one. I think that the 3D turned out better than I had initially thought it would. I am quite pleased with the sound especially at the start I think it sets the scene quite nicely. If I did this animatic again I would probably use the 2D elements in a 3D programme like Maya or 3Dsmax as it is easier to use and navigate to set up the scenes and do more interesting camera movements. Overall the timing of the shots could have been adjusted, some faster and some slower. I would rectify this if I had time.

Transforms back scene

In this scene the healer, after having his revenge on his killers, returns back home and transforms back into a human and the spirt leaves him; a person finds him and this ends the scene. I am quite happy with the tranmsform I think that it gets the point across but the 3D is not so good as it was the first one I did. If I did this again I would do the whole thing using a 3D application. 

Transforming

For the transformation back into a human I did not know how to tackle this, all my ideas seemed a bit boring or too simple, like the camera turning away and then back again to find him transformed. So I consulted the group and asked if they had any ideas of an interesting way to tackle this. Someone mentioned Darwin and the transformation from ape to man. I liked the idea and researched into it more. See diagram above. First I changed the ape to a panther, but I had the problem that the man was to end up dead on the ground. So I them did another concept of him transforming from a panther to a laying down position. I am quite pleased with this version, see below.

How I made my Animatic

To make my animatic I had to come up with set peices for example huts and a spirts. Here are some of my ideas, I drew these on Photoshop.

To make my animatic I created each scene in Photoshop. I did each component of my scene in a different layer in Photoishop. This gave me a greater amount of flexibility and an easy way to create my scenes. I will go through the process for one of my scenes. 

I open Photoshop and drew all the different components I would need for that scene. For the jungle I grew a scetion of it and copied and pasted it moved the layers around and flipped some of them so that they were opposite. This gave quite a good forest-like effect. 

After creating my scene in Photoshop I could them export it into a programme to animate. The two programmes that I know I am comfortable using are Premier and After Effrects. I decided to use AfterEffects as it has a 3D option that I thought might be useful.

Next I crerated a composition in AfterEffects, as a group we decided the compsition settings should be PAL D1/DV widescreen square pixel. Next I emported my Photoshop file which brought in all my layers seperately Now having all my layers seperately I could turn on 3D space and pull all the layers into the right place in the Z axis. With this I could create a camera and move it in the z axis, this gives the impression of moving back or forwards through the forest and the different layers.

 After this I did all the pieces in the scene , for example the transformation from panther to man.

This is one layer, below you can see the layers duplicatede to form a forest effect.

I also created some scenes in 3D, I used 3DsMax not Maya. I wanted to use Maya but do not still feel comfortable enough to use it for this type of work. I decided to use a few 3D parts because of the complex camera movements. In 3DSMax I created a basic scene and had the camera fly in and do panning shots that I could not show in 2D. In my scene I had some 2D elements that I emported the images and put them on flat planes. 

Using these techniques I made my whole animatic. If you look you will see some parts are better than others as I developed my skills. Some do not have enogh background like the forest.

Filmic language

Things to think about are the rules of filmic language for example the rule of thirds, were it is more pleasing to the eye to have the the most important image off centre. There are lots of rules to make your shots more interesting and more appealing to the eye, for example having the cameras low down or high to give the impression of size. These are only a few examples of what can be done to make the imagery more interesting. 

Diagonal rule.

Rule of thirds.

http://www.colorpilot.com/comp_rules.html

Depth of Field

I started to look at cameras in after effects and how they work. I found that they worked just like in real life. I did research in depth of field and found out more about it using camreras. I used thiese concepts to add more interesting, real, and pleasing to the eye shots into my animatic. 

My scene with depth of field.

Animatic Video Research

Here are some examples of animatics. The first one is the Star Wars pod racer scene. I like it because it has the stoyboard, animatic and final piece that can all be viewed at once so that you can see the different stages at the same time.

The second video In found on You tube. Ilike this animatic I think that it is effective.