Dilemma - Idea Development

I had the concept for the film at the end of first year/early second year. Just the look of it popped into my head: A round cartoon character juxtaposed with straight and edgy abstract shapes. That's what I wanted my film to look like. The image was there but the full idea wasn't. 

At the beginning of the second half of second year I quickly drew a concept drawing out since I didn't want the image I had in my head to go away. So here's that drawing from 2ish years ago!

Even that early on I already knew what I wanted in my thesis film. 5 things:

1 - Cartoon animation

     Because I love it and have fun doing it.

2 - Motion graphics and moving shapes  

     Because I love graphic design.

3 - Music based (specifically big band) 

     Because I like old music and big band fits with cartoon animation acting as sound effects.

4 - No layout 

     Because I'm not good at it.

That's it! I wanted my film to be about everything I enjoy and I wanted it to play to my strengths. I didn't want to spend time on things I didn't like and things I wasn't particularly good at. My thought was that if I spent time on something I'm not good at, that is time away from improving on something that I want to be better at. I also wanted it to be 1 minute since during industry day they only show 1 minute of our films during the screening. I wanted a whole product on the screen and I also didn't want to overwork myself. 1 minute was already a ton of work for this film and I would have ripped my hair out if I did it any longer.

I also wanted to incorporate a bit of fine art into it because in the end I have a huge passion for art. When I saw Michel Gagne's Sensology had imagery that resembled Wassily Kandinsky's work, I had a direction I wanted to take it to. Other works I referenced were iPod silhouette commercials, Day & Night by Pixar, Carnival of Animals from Fantasia 2000, The Dot and Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics by Chuck Jones, UPA, Fleischer Bros., Piet Mondrian, Picasso, Saul Bass, and more that I probably missed. 

Here are some stuff I made in 3rd year. Quick doodles that I made in order to get the idea across.

Although Kandinsky was my first idea, I experimented with boards and sketches with much more basic shapes. A lot of people suggested I simplify things and choose the basic shapes to make the workload a little easier for myself since I was already planning to fully animate characters for the total 1 minute. Which was a smart suggestion since in the end the workload I had was already enough and challenging for me. But I still think about how my film would have turned out with more elaborate Kandinsky style effects.

Here is the first image I made that incorporated the idea I had of using flat shapes to suggest perspective and only when placing the character in it would it give context. I created a rough storyboard sequence in 3rd year using this concept and my instructor suggested I take that idea further.

Progress Reel

Here's my progress reel! I locked down my storyboards by end of September and started animating in October. Other classes got in the way so full on animating didn't start until January to very early March. Clean up took the whole month of March and colouring was a breeze on Toonboom which took 3 days. My original plan was to finish in March but I took into account delays and revisions. I still managed to finish several weeks early! I also never pulled any all nighters and only worked at school from 9am - 9pm and took weekends off! I had to come in on weekends a few times during clean up, but apart from that I had a very healthy lifestyle in fourth year compared to my other three years. I felt great!

A few of my friends kept asking about how I time manage well. Here's the secret: JUST WORK ON YOUR FILM. Don't get side tracked. Fourth year was deceiving with all the "free time" you have with less classes, I just spent most of that working but still took time to have fun. So to any upcoming fourth years working on their thesis films and are reading this: work on your film as much as you can. Lock down your boards as soon as possible. Aim for something manageable and to your strengths. And most importantly sleep. Don't work tired, it will just make the work you output worse. Good luck!

"I'll Do It" Leica

After multiple attempts at uploading this assignment on various websites, I finally did it. The video was taken down and muted on one website, the file was too big on the other, the pages with the boards were also too big for Blogger and Tumblr. So after multiple attempts and delays I finally managed to take time and re-export all the files and finally figured out a way to upload it somewhere. 

Here's my second storyboard assignment from last semester that required us to make a story stemming from the conflict "I'll Do It". My teacher loved the idea and absolutely enjoyed the story and leica reel which I was extremely happy about! The leica even made it onto the TVs in the hallways! WOO!

Anyway enjoy the show:

Concept Work

Here are the beat boards I did for the assignment. I couldn't think of an idea when we were given "I'll Do It" and the only one I could think of was of ghosts taking turns scaring a couple away from their new home. The original beats involved a regular couple moving in to their new home with each ghosts' attempts at scaring only helping their move in day. The two gags I had in mind made it into the final but in a different context. The first was the possessions of boxes and furniture flying overhead only to land in the correct place (desks, couches and picture frames fall in place) and the other was blood oozing from the walls only to be used to paint the walls. Same gags different context.

It wasn't until I pitched the idea that my teacher, Nancy Beiman, who said to make them into artists instead and the ruckus they cause creates art they appreciate. I thought it was genius and it was then that I enjoyed working with the story, I honestly was not too fond with it at first. 

Original character line up with a regular old couple.

The penultimate line up. I ended up cutting the wife as she didn't contribute anything more to the story it was difficult figuring out when Arthur or Lily should appear when composing shots. It caused too much hassle and removing her made things much more easier. 

***

Overall I enjoyed this assignment a lot the more I worked on it and the more feedback I got. I even struggled with an ending with the final boards at first and a simple switch of two boards during a pitch gave me such a perfect ending. It originally had the ghosts just get angry being unable to scare him and my teacher moved a panel (page 11 panel 4) which made you interpret it instead as the ghosts not understanding the art. I then edited it so that it was in an art gallery afterwards and it made me so happy to finally have an ending.

Pitching was also fun! Especially with an idea of your own. Half way through my final pitch I actually got used it and started to enjoy it. It felt fun and really, not thinking about how to pitch it and just telling what it is made the whole thing easy.

Making the leica reel was also a blast. I had trouble picking from the bunch of music my teacher provided for a scratch track. Luckily during the day we were to work on it in class I found Alpine Pastures very last minute and tried it out. It fit so perfectly with the timing of certain moments in the story and my teacher loved the contrast between the cheerful music and horror elements which perfectly sums up the tone of my story.

It was a fun experience coming up with a story, pitching it, getting it critiqued and fixed. The whole mantra of "What If?" in creating a story is something extremely helpful. Seeing a mediocre idea evolve into something I enjoyed was exciting. 

It may not be the best story and storyboards you'll ever come across (layouts ugh, I'm so sorry), but I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed making it.

A Mistake - Storyboard

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, school has been extremely hectic especially these past two weeks. Luckily this week isn't so bad but unfortunately the week after is. 

Here is the final storyboard for the story beats I made previously, I hope you enjoy it!

Making my first legitimate storyboard sequence was a really enjoyable learning experience. I learned a lot like what are good and bad cuts, especially how to save a bad cut. Reading my instructor Nancy Beiman's book, Prepare to Board was extremely helpful. The book is easy to read and explains things in a simple way with a lot of visual examples (great for artists!). I highly recommend the book. The process of creating the boards was a bit of a struggle at first but I found that once you find a good way to start, boarding the rest just came easily.

The same thing happened with the story I'm boarding now, I struggled and spent a week trying to figure out how to begin. After coming up with the best idea I could, the rest just came quickly. I'm enjoying the storyboarding process so far! It's difficult but its extremely satisfying to put together a story and develop it in the end.

Storyboard Beats

*Updated*

Our first assignment for storyboard was to create beat boards from 2 poems that were given to us. We were to interpret each poem however we wanted. 

I had another idea for the Mistake poem that my instructor liked except the ending, so I decided to change the entire first one's story to what it is now. I will update this post later if I manage to scan those, but my scanner at home currently isn't working properly.

After pitching these beat boards we are to expand and actually storyboard one of them. My instructor extremely liked my Good Little Girl idea but thought that the story had already resolved. So I am currently in the process of elaborating on my A Mistake idea.

I found the process of figuring out a story was extremely fun, I was able to flex my storytelling imagination. My whole process was thinking of the first idea I had and then completely scrap most of it if it wasn't at all interesting. Surprisingly my prediction that my first ideas would be filled with cliches was true as I saw many other stories with similar ideas I originally had. That's not to say that my stories are free from cliches, I just think that these are stronger than what I originally had. 

Rough Work

Character development of Isabelle, my favourite is the bottom left. 

Two other characters from my original interpretation of the Mistake poem, the couple Bruce and Holly. I did keep the name Bruce for the bear in my final idea.

The two pictures above are roughs of first idea I had. The top one of the first page and all three panels in the bottom page were used to pitch. It involved a couple snowed in their home, Holly giving Bruce a snowblower as a gift, Bruce riding and crashing the snowblower into their home, and finally them celebrating Christmas while using the crashed snowblower in their home as a Christmas tree/furniture. It was a decent idea with an okay ending, I decided to change it because I wasn't really satisfied with how the plot develops, it required decent perspective/layout which I'm not so good at, and the fact that it was too "realistic" and not really animated. 

Early Bruce and Bib designs, Bib remained pretty much the same.

My original idea had Bruce swinging at the hive only to have it get stuck at the end of the stick he used. The bees would then swarm and attack him. This idea didn't work since in the story the characters didn't accomplish much. Plus I had no clue how to conclude it in the final beat. 

The final roughs of Bib and Bruce's designs. Keeping these character very shapely (oval and circle) helps a ton when having to draw many storyboards with them, and makes them extremely easy to identify.