★254 [push play]: June 2010

My project involved timing frames to a soundtrack to produce a working animatic. I did mention that with enough time there will also be fully animated shots. Now that was the task.
As I mentioned before most of the pre-production for this animatic was already done and thought of in my spare time. However the main character did have a few issues with it concerning just how poorly it reads to the audiences due to its peculiar design. One thing i learned while studying here is that everything has to be as obvious to the audiences as possible. So after a few sessions with Derek new look was introduced to solve this issue. Now this does actually mean that pre-production wasn't done as thurully as i believed.
A lot of problems went with it. Due to extreme occupation with other project I wasnt really working enough hours. Most of the work was done in sketchbook in the form of quick sketches when i should have been thinking of the music and working from there.
This relied heavily on teamwork. But again due to the amount of projects people had to be involved with I soon decided to do everything by myself. After all an animatic on its own is an achievable goal. However heavily reluctant on some strong visual concepts my project actually lost quite a lot of quality without the work on the backgrounds as planned.
The issues with the actual script. In respect to the nature of the soundtrack the story elements had to be simplifyed and later discarded completely. To me, this music piece lead to abstract visual elements. It's is important to note, I usually spend long periods of time planning animations in my head. In this case the animation had a variety of possible storyboards and yet i picked something completely "story-less".
Some research went into it as well. Musical artist Moby had a definite influence on my composer friend's work therefore musical videos like "Sunday" help to understand how finished animation might look in CG.
I was constantly driven by my musician friend to proceed with the task as he wants to get it finished as soon as possible and it will be a nice collaborative piece of work for both of us.

Fair to say that it was probably a different type of project to what was planned originally. Stated in the brief, wish to produce an animatic approximately one minute long, with some animation in it. Animation and timing were the focus. But it so happened I still worked my head around the final design, comparing different ideas, applying storyboards. So it's worth talking a little about character design as well.

Problems. Its essential to point out just how rubbish the whole system has been lately particularly from the point of view of 3d people and anyone who relies heavily on software. Yes, everything still theoretically can function but it takes up valuable time to solve computer-related faults.

For the actual animatic the most challenging thing so far is to get it understood. If i can make the visuals legible and obvious but grotesque and intriguing at the same time it would be ideal. I want the spectator to play along with it, to want to enter it or chase after it. In a way I have been doing a director's job instead of being an animator.

Character design went longer way than meets the eye at first. First of all the characters had a story behind them and had to fit with it. But as I went frier in terms of the world in which they live (partially because of the soundtrack) the characters started to morph by themselves into what they are now.

All in all its a good first step towards making a short.