This week, I finished the final draft of my storyboard and completed drawings for a rough animatic. After receiving more feedback on my storyboards, I decided to take more panels out. Now, instead of Fern standing up to the headmistress, she remains scared and backs out of frame before the zombie attacks the headmistress. The close up of both Fern’s and the headmaster’s hand was also taken out. At first, I was worried about these changes as the beginning of my animation now conveys a different emotion than we had originally planned. However, I am now happy with the decision as I feel as though the karma that the headmistress receives by being touched by the zombies now works better. Instead of her being scared of Fern, she is still angry and mischievous, meaning that she deserved what was coming to her.
To get the right look for the zombies, I used behind the scenes videos of The Walking Dead’s zombie school where people audition and learn how to play the zombies throughout season 4 of the show. This was extremely helpful to see their movements, even for drawing a panel on my storyboard as I found it extremely difficult to draw a realistic full upper body of a zombie from just images.
Reference Video:
Final Storyboard:
As for my animatic, I have now completed shots 1 and 2 and have finished all rough drawings for the rest of the animatic. However, as I had not used Premier Pro for a while before this, I had to familiarise myself again with the software, and did not leave myself enough time to complete the full animatic. Also, as my storyboard had some changes this week, I started a drawing that was then deleted from my storyboard, leaving even less time for the rest of my animatic. I am happy with how the first 2 shots look and plan on putting the rest of the drawings together this week so I can receive some feedback on timing, so I can start animating soon.
Finished Animatic Shots:
Other Drawings:
Deleted Drawing:
In class this week, Alec gave my group some advice on referencing for our animations. Up until now, we had been mostly taking images from Pinterest or Google Images or videos from YouTube. To get the right movement, he told us to film ourselves doing the actions we require for our scenes. For the shot where the headmistress is pushed down the stairs, I asked Cloe and Jasmin to act it out for me on the stairs on campus.
Reference Videos: