On Monday, I had finished my flipbooks and 2 second animation, so I started a new one. I wanted to be very ambitious with this being a more detailed character animation. I have started to create the plan of a wizard trying to shoot some sort of magic blast but instead it backfires and he goes flying off of the right side of frame. There aren't too many complex movements to be done in this but there will lots of inbetweens to smooth the motion and build anticipation. This is something extra that I will continue to work on in my own time since we have moved onto storyboards in the studio.
When we started on creating storyboards, I was really struggling to think of a nursery rhyme to use as my story. I realized that I didn't really know many, so I settled for Humpty Dumpty. I started off in creating this by thinking of the camera angles and movements I was using. I wanted to make this to be as if it was a very short, cheesy animation. I open with an establishing shot of humpty on the castle wall, followed by a shot looking slightly up at him. I was originally having him fall forwards off the wall but it is harder to fall forwards when rocking like that. It would be much more likely and realistic for him to have fallen backwards. Also, this meant that the kings men could see him straight away. I wanted to fall to be sudden and shocking which is why I chose to have it cut to black before impact. After this point is where I actually got a little stuck. I was struggling to think of how to make the kings men come to help.
I took a break and came back to it the next day and then simply had them walk over. Following the close up shot of humpty as he is on the floor. I wanted to have the shot of the men approaching to be rather close from his point of view.
I was looking at other storyboards made for Wallace and Gromit. The main focus is always to follow the action. This in particular scene is from 'The Wrong Trousers' and is such a well made scene for its visual comedy and inventiveness. It only cuts away to show other important elements that impact on the main action of the scene which is the train chase. It has a lot of interesting movements and communicates the story very well. This is the whole point of a storyboard and something that I'm trying to do in mine.
Once I had finished my storyboard on the sticky notes, I then started recreating them on photoshop. This was fun because I like drawing in Photoshop with graphics tablets. For the most part, the storyboard stayed the same. There was only really one major change and that was with how the kings men saw humpty once he had landed. I made the camera much tighter on them as they turned to look. I felt that this would help to keep the tension and emotion in a scene of this kind, as it would be a proper reaction shot. Once I had finished drawing each frame into the storyboard sheet, I could then turn it into an animatic.
I cropped every frame of the storyboard down to its own image and then exported them into Premiere. I could then set the timings of each shot. For some of the shots where the action was more substantial, I created variant frames to show the movement. I did this for the shot of humpty rocking off the back of the wall, the kings men turning their heads and them then walking up to humpty. This helped to show what was going on in those frames. One issue I faced in the stage was the fact that because I had earlier changed the direction of the fall, it then made the camera zoom not work as I had envisioned. I first thought that since he was falling face down, the camera zooming into his mouth could work to show the speed and then also be what cuts to black at the same time. Unfortunately, as he was now falling backwards, this would make little sense, so I had to have the camera zooming out from him to show the speed and then just cut to black normally. I feel that this did take away a visually interesting transition but it was necessary to communicate the speed of the fall.
I enjoyed creating this storyboard and actually found it more challenging than I had expected. I have created storyboards in the past and been fine with it but I think it maybe was to do with the fact that this wasn't my own original story. All in all, I am pretty happy with how this storyboard has turned out. I do not feel it is the best I have made but I do like it. I feel that it maybe loses some sort of interest in the second half but I'm not entirely sure why. I look forward to doing more storyboards in the future and hopefully make them better quality.
I was looking at other storyboards made for Wallace and Gromit. The main focus is always to follow the action. This in particular scene is from 'The Wrong Trousers' and is such a well made scene for its visual comedy and inventiveness. It only cuts away to show other important elements that impact on the main action of the scene which is the train chase. It has a lot of interesting movements and communicates the story very well. This is the whole point of a storyboard and something that I'm trying to do in mine.
Once I had finished my storyboard on the sticky notes, I then started recreating them on photoshop. This was fun because I like drawing in Photoshop with graphics tablets. For the most part, the storyboard stayed the same. There was only really one major change and that was with how the kings men saw humpty once he had landed. I made the camera much tighter on them as they turned to look. I felt that this would help to keep the tension and emotion in a scene of this kind, as it would be a proper reaction shot. Once I had finished drawing each frame into the storyboard sheet, I could then turn it into an animatic.
I cropped every frame of the storyboard down to its own image and then exported them into Premiere. I could then set the timings of each shot. For some of the shots where the action was more substantial, I created variant frames to show the movement. I did this for the shot of humpty rocking off the back of the wall, the kings men turning their heads and them then walking up to humpty. This helped to show what was going on in those frames. One issue I faced in the stage was the fact that because I had earlier changed the direction of the fall, it then made the camera zoom not work as I had envisioned. I first thought that since he was falling face down, the camera zooming into his mouth could work to show the speed and then also be what cuts to black at the same time. Unfortunately, as he was now falling backwards, this would make little sense, so I had to have the camera zooming out from him to show the speed and then just cut to black normally. I feel that this did take away a visually interesting transition but it was necessary to communicate the speed of the fall.
I enjoyed creating this storyboard and actually found it more challenging than I had expected. I have created storyboards in the past and been fine with it but I think it maybe was to do with the fact that this wasn't my own original story. All in all, I am pretty happy with how this storyboard has turned out. I do not feel it is the best I have made but I do like it. I feel that it maybe loses some sort of interest in the second half but I'm not entirely sure why. I look forward to doing more storyboards in the future and hopefully make them better quality.
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