Once our character designs were done, Chloe made a storyboard based on our script.

 

When we made the storyboard into an animatic, we realised that it was too much to fit into 30 seconds. Our lecturers suggested that we should replace the initial scenes with the mob boss snail in the office, although Rhys had already started modelling both the character and environment. We discussed this, and Rhys agreed to scrap the models for now and we came up with a new opening scene.

To quickly show who the main character was and why he was going after the victim, we decided to open with a shot of a “wanted” poster saying that he’s an assassin, then a shot of him holding a photo of the victim. We felt this clearly implied that the main character was hired to kill the victim. These shots are not just shorter than our original idea, but a lot easier to animate too. The first shot is mostly just the camera panning to the left, and the second shot is just the photo prop moving downwards and perhaps a little idle animation for the victim – this is a lot easier to do than animating the movement of the boss rig and the assassin rig. Also, this new opening takes place in the same setting as the rest of the short, meaning we don’t have to texture or set up lighting in the office.

Once this was all decided, I drew a new storyboard for the opening.