This week, our homework was to create a storyboard for our animation and animate a flour sack character by using a pose-to-pose method. My 10-15 seconds of the animation is at the very end when Fern has realised what the headmistress has done to the headmaster. As karma, she is then touched by the mushroom zombies and turns into one herself. It finishes with both sides at war. I initially took inspiration from clementine from the walking dead videogame and Padma Patil from Harry Potter for Fern. We then went with Cloe’s design for Fern’s Character. The headmistress was inspired by Mother Gothel from Tangled and Yzma from Emperor’s New Groove. We went with Eimear’s final design for her. With these designs finalised, I was able to make good progress with my storyboard and begin the first drafts.
Fern References:
Cloe’s Design:
Headmistress References:
Eimear’s Design:
I initially wanted Fern to be shocked and a little scared of the headmistress after realising she is the reason for the zombies. Then when she sees a hand move in slow motion about to grab the headmistress, she realises her anger, and doesn’t push her away, but lets the zombie grab her. She then turns into a zombie herself and stands with the others. We see a closeup of a wand, then of a zombie hand, and it pans out to the two groups standing opposite one another.
I then changed the order of a couple of the panels. We now see a closeup of Fern immediately going from shocked to angry. Instead of a hand grabbing the headmistress straight away, I wanted to show Fern standing up to her, so it is now the headmistress’s turn to feel small and scared. At the end, when both groups are opposite one another, Fern casts a spell that fills the screen, leaving the animation on a cliff-hanger. The screen then fades out from white to black. I had to change the descriptions in my storyboard as I learned from this week’s lecture that they are not meant to tell the viewer what is happening, each panel should do that on their own. I changed them to describe the timing and camera angle/movement of each panel, as well as character notes for when I start my animatic.
I really enjoyed creating the flour sack animation this week. I had only used Krita for creating animations for the first time last week, so this was my first time animating with forms on Krita. Learning about the principals when animating, such as using arcs, made the movements of the sack more realistic. I found it a little difficult in the beginning using the pose to pose method and drawing the in-betweens, but after a while I found it very enjoyable and am extremely happy with the result.