Process and Production: 29th January - 5th February 2017

I got to work designing the two main characters. I started with drawing out a variety of head shapes. This was rather enjoyable and something that I developed upon through the visual language module. However I still didn't want to spend too much time on this because this animation is very ambitious and I want to leave myself as much time as possible to work on that side of the project.

The thing that I really struggled with in this was designing a hair style for the man that I liked. I wanted something that wasn't too tidy and well kept in order to show that he was a bit clumsy and careless. I started to like the shaved sides but I wasn't fond of much of the stuff I created for the top of his head. I wanted something that could be a bit floppy to help me show motion but also I didn't want it to be too detailed since I am going to be animating lots of really expressive frame by frame motion.

I eventually settled on the one with three simple strands hanging down and the rest being neat and more simple to draw. This gives me something to move around to accentuate the motion. I decided on the design for the woman very quickly. I was pretty happy with just the first few drawings and so I decided to roll with that since she wasn't featured as heavily as the man.

Once I'd finished these it made it much easier to do the storyboard. I made sure to try and add detail of the characters to act as a good reference. I used many frames in this storyboard, more than I usually do. I made a new drawing for the main key poses I could think of. This is much more detailed and helpful as a reference when I come to animating and it also makes the animatic much simpler because I have already drawn the main keyframes. 

I scanned in my sticky notes to use for the animatic. I timed them up to the text files I'd made before and as expected they had to be tweaked to feel more natural. I then took this to the sound studio and brought in two people to record the voices. I described the kind of sounds and reactions that I was thinking about but also just let them play around with it. I let the video loop and asked my voice actors to just keep doing many takes in time with the video. This worked very well since I had many options to use when editing. I cut together a few different bits from different takes for the final thing. 

I'm really happy with this finished animatic. I think that it does communicate what is happening and the voices and sound effects really help that along. I will have to go back through and properly mix these to make sure the important bits can all be heard over the ambient sounds.