Applied Animation: Creating the Final Storyboard 2

So creating the storyboard is fully underway and we'd agreed that when it came to animating we would stick as closely as we possibly could to the storyboard. I am the one developing the final storyboard but I informed the others that if they have any new ideas they could let me know and I'll figure out how to work it in. But basically the final storyboard needs to be really strong meaning every frame needs to have the right camera angle so Matt can take the panel as a guideline of how to create the background. The final storyboard has taken quite a bit of time but looking back, it has definitely been worth doing in order for everyone in the group to understand exactly what they are doing. The storyboard has also taken so long to create because I needed to pay extra attention to detail.

For example in the above panel I use exactly the same shot as the one that takes place ten years before. So when it comes to animating this shot it should take a lot less time as the animator can just use the same scene with the same animation roughs but then alter the visual aesthetic to show that the college has been decimated.

The same can be said for the above images. I feel this should be a fairly successful technique as any way we can be manage our time more effectively has got to be a good thing.

I really liked the idea that as time goes on and over the ten years as the character's mental stability begins to crumble, and their lives crumble, the environment around them literally crumbles. So in the end it looks like the college has been abandoned for years and left to rot. This kind of represents what the characters have done to their own lives but I think we all liked the idea that these are just minor details that are never really addressed. So I knew I needed to work this into the storyboard too give Matt an idea of how to create the background designs around the storyboard panels. So researched abandoned places on Google images and found lots of details that I could work into the storyboard to give the impression of abandonment, for example graffiti and just random objects scattered about.

I feel like this idea serves the narrative very well because even though I think we all feel the actual idea is strong, there is a worry that it could be a bit boring if it is just documenting animators making an animation. We want to create a different world for these characters to live in which supports the idea that this animation is not real and is a satire.

Applied Animation: Creating the Final Storyboard

As director, it is my job to direct the shots. That's not meaning I want to have absolute control over the entire creative process. Any ideas Matt and Jemma have I have mentioned that we will figure out if we can put them into the storyboard and I will try to include them. Because it is a group of three of us, the story-boarding process to me has never been more crucial to the animation process. Since we have three different brains, even though we all like the same idea, we would always have slightly different ways of going about animating. Therefore I felt it is imperative to create a detailed plan that we all like and agree on that can heavily guide us or if we want to individually take and work on. That plan, is the final storyboard, so it needs to contain everything we want in the animation, e.g. shots, character movement, character emotions etc. So that is what i am currently working on at the moment.

Applied Animation: Initial Character Designs

At this stage I don't think Matt, Jemma and I have entirely made up our minds about whether the main two protagonists of our animation are going to be based off of Matt and myself. On the plus side, that would aide with the idea of this animation being a blood relative to The Void, but on the negative, there is something slightly unsettling about creating characters that are so similar to ourselves yet have basically terrible lives and have made some incredibly negative decisions. But I do like the idea of creating satirical versions of ourselves. Throughout my life I have watched shows such as Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm where people play fictionalised, basically terrible versions of themselves. So I'm really interested in that idea of making a version of myself that is basically terrible, and then in my real life trying to be as far from that version as possible.

I've drawn Matt in the past many times before, but this time was different. This time it was about taking traits of the real life Matt and turning him into an animated character. Of course I began this process by drawing from reference…

The above were some basic drawn designs I did of Matt, full body in shot just to get an idea about dimensions, obviously in the above image he does look fairly cartoon-like with a massive head so I will alter this shortly.

The above images were more accurate drawings when I was trying to go more for a realistic visual aesthetic. I do really like working with this sort of technique where a drawing becomes like a silhouette or a stencil. And I often find that it differentiates from the way I usually draw in that dimensions are more proportioned.

We decided fairly early on that the documentary animation would take place over around ten years and in that time these characters would go from having good lives to basically everything in their lives falling apart. So obviously I need to age the characters in a realistic way, they cannot look the same ten years later, but furthermore, by the end, they have to look like they have pretty much lost the plot entirely.

Matt aged 20

Matt aged 30

When it came to ageing Matt I tried to imagine what the real Matt would look like in ten years. When we first met, a year and a half ago he did look quite different to how he does now. 

He had much shorter hair, no facial hair, no yellow in his hair, no earring and basically, like myself he just looked much younger. I think we look older now due to a few factors, the natural process of ageing, university life and the rapid intensity of the workload that comes with animation. So in our animation I exaggerate this ageing process a great deal by growing Matt's hair out and giving him a full beard. I also took inspiration for his 30 year old look from Jeff Buckley.

I received feedback about the 30 year old Matt and was advised to further exaggerate the bags under his eyes. Us animators already in second year have bags under our eyes and are generally more tired than in first year. Sometimes I think first year animation students are loud and am often confused at how full of life and basically young they are, but essentially that was us before undertaking all the work we have.

Applied Animation: Our New Final Idea

For inspiration when we were desperately trying to come up[ with a new idea that was original, interesting and we were passionate about, I looked at other documentaries for inspiration. I looked up articles such as The 50 Greatest Documentaries of All Time and The 50 Weirdest Documentaries of All Time and I also thought about my favourite documentaries.

The above are some of my favourite documentaries, but they all share something in common, whether their about geniuses of animation, troubled artists or mass murderers, they are all about incredibly fascinating people. What I struggled with was that I don't know anyone like that, don't get me wrong I know some fascinating people, but I don't know enough about them to document them, I spend most my hours at the moment in college. 

Then I remembered something. When you've got writers block or in this case animators block of which I've had for a while, write what you know or animate what you know, and what do we know? Animators. 

We came up with the idea that we could create an animated documentary that over ten years follows two animators who are making an animation that they believe will 'make them'. But as they get more and more into the project, their own personal lives begin to fall apart and by the end of the ten years they have become so obsessed with what they're working on that essentially they've lost everything else as well as they're grips on reality itself.

Matt and Jemma liked the idea very much but Matt was concerned about how heavy the subject was and how these characters are basically myself and Matt. I reassured him that these characters, at this place in time also called Matt and Max are entirely fictitious versions of ourselves and this whole animation, although based partially on reality is a satire and very much an exaggerated version of the animator student world we live in.

Then to add a level of deepness to the idea, we decided to make this animation a 'blood relative' of mine and Matt's previous animated collaboration The Void. In The Void we made appearances as fictitious versions of ourselves where we interacted with the animated 3D characters that we created.

Well in this new animation we car up with the idea that it is told from the perspective of the animators and certain things about The Void become explained. For example, how can an animated character have freewill to kill another animated character and interact with the animators who created it? Simple, it can't. It's all imagined and in the heads of the animators. In The Void, the 3D animated character Number 1 has killed off 53 other animated characters that the animators have created to interact with Number 1 and complete the animation. Their excuse for why it's taken them so long to complete the animation is that the animated character they created keeps on killing off the other animated characters they place into the world so they can never complete it. But when you think about it, this makes no sense at all and obviously shows the animators are loosing the plot.

So in conclusion our animated documentary appears to be about two animators making what they consider to be an amazing animation that will 'make them' but really it's about two guys basically loosing their grips on reality. The audience will never actually see the animation that their making or know what it's about, or whether it even actually exists.

Applied Animation: Project U Turn

So when we returned from our assessment two weeks we were told news that was probably a long time coming but yet not welcome. Our idea didn't quite fit the brief as a 'documentary' in our synopsis, the cameraman is documenting interviewing a couple and then a satanist cult emerges from the background and then a mad ritual starts taking place, it ends with the cult members chasing down and killing the cameraman. All three of us liked the idea but we were given feedback that there was no focus to the idea, in that the documentary wasn't really about anything and had no focus point, therefore as the idea it was, it was not going to work. We were advised on how we could change the idea but we found that the more the idea changed, the less enthusiastic we were about it. The idea became so altered that we ended up basically deciding to start again with a fresh idea.

Though the idea of starting fresh was liberating, so we would no longer have to try and force a wrong sized puzzle piece into a slot. But we were painfully aware that our critique presentations where we would have to present all our concept work was Monday and it was already Wednesday. So as director I decided that the day after, Thursday, we would come to college and not allow ourselves to leave till we have an idea that we love, fits the brief and we would be more than happy to work on for the next few months. It took hours of staring but eventually we came to an idea we are all passionate about.