MP Pre-Production
Thumbnails
Painting thumbnails of key moments from the storyline has helped me gather a better sense of the depth, contrast and composition of each scene. They aren’t final, but the extra thumbnail pages will help if I am lost in picturing a scene.
Character Design
I was recommended by my tutors during my pitch presentation that the Aliens should wear clothing and accessories, so the main characters can be distinguished from each other, and saves the limbs from getting lost on the body (as the whole body is one colour).
I have three alternate designs for each character for variation and speculating new ideas. This process was good to develop the individuality of each character when initial ideas became like others, such as the old operator design, and the inspector.
Turnarounds for each character that will be fully rigged – The Alien, the alien inspector, and the baby.
These are colour studies for the alien characters, both the skin colours, and the colours of the clothing & accessories. When producing the alien rig, I decided I will stick to one colour, perhaps the first option in variation 1. I can use the rest as a palette in the compositing stage, where I can adjust rig colours with effect presets.
with the clothes, I had to make sure the contrast between its colours and the skin colours were working. I could see this by applying a black & white filter to determine their values.
This gave me an overall idea of how the contrast worked or didn’t work. For example, the purple and green in Alien Operator clashed too much, so I changed it to a brighter yellow.
I designed the baby with a toddler onesie outfit, a colour coded dummy and some fair hair on their head. I applied the black and white filter again to see its contrast, and I am favouring the first colour choice most.
Once the baby was coloured/designed, I could add all the main characters into this page where I can set the height / size of each character next to each other. I am happy with how the main characters are looking. They all differ from each other and they have unique looks with clear idea of their personality / role in the story.
Background Design
Before I jumped into the background design, I tested some of the drawings from the storyboards into greyscale thumbnails to figure out the shapes, and depth of field. 
I started designing the first shot background as it requires a pan down camera move, so it needs to be longer. I blocked out simple shapes, then designed the park sign, and park entrance based on my thumbnails and concepts. The first design started well, however I struggled with blocking out shadows, the font was hard to read, and the stalls were too light in tone, it needed more contrast.
In my next drafts I applied my fixes, the font and its colour has changed, the shadows are simpler and the stalls have more contrast.
In the next two shots, they are designed to pan from left to right, so they are made wider. I aimed for this scene to include lots of detail to establish the theme park vibrance and activities – such as the ball throwing stall, and the toy stalls.
It took some time to make this background as it was the first of many drawings of stalls, so I had to make sure these stalls were a good design so I could use them as reference for the rest of the stalls.
The rest of the backgrounds had the normal ratio of 1920 x 1080 as they are majorly static, or have zoom in/out camera moves. Some designs had gone through 2 versions for fixing up perspective, or from feedback from tutors.
Storyboard V1
At first, I wanted my story to have a strong meaning behind it, that it is okay that one person doesn’t support you, because many other people do. It is a good idea, however I struggled with balancing the comedy along with this meaning, or if it went along with it at all. At this stage, there were many solo shots and cuts.
Storyboard V2
This version was a little more structured and lasted longer. I had a careful look through each action and made changes where necessary. I ensured the inspector had more of an appearance, reaction and importance to the story, and that the aliens had stronger reactions, and are affected more.
Storyboard V3
In this version I was clearing up some background elements, but also wanted to change the ending as I decided I wanted this story to include mostly comedic scenes.
Storyboard V4
In my fourth version, many changes were made, the most noticeable one being the inspector is not giant anymore. I allowed alien boss have a more important role at the start, and the alien cook to have a customer to interact with. The ending reveals that the inspector approves of the theme park and leaves happily, so the aliens celebrate. I am happy with this layout, as it has gone through many alterations to get the structure right.
Experimentation
For my experimentation process, I was testing the Illustrator program, as I haven’t used it in a while. In Illustrator I built a test rig applying the same process as I do in Photoshop, but this time with Illustrator tools and techniques. I experimented with the pen tools, masks and gradients – familiarising myself with the program as I went along. In the end I came up with this test build of the Alien.
I like how it looks far, although some parts need mending before I build the proper rig. For example, I need to better test how the torso and hips move together, and I need to make sure each element is its own layer.
I tried building one background design I have while referencing my inspiration, and this is the result. I am not as happy with this outcome as I think I could pick out better colours, that the popcorn machine is too flat, and I need to experiment and reference more the texture style that my inspiration has. However, I can always improve in the next attempt, and this version will work for now.
Bringing in the BG to After Effects, I made sure to export each layer as a separate PNG and correctly labelled. I added in the Illustrator rig to the scene, and quickly rigged one of the arms, and the head / neck to test its movement. The result is below in a video. I am happy with the scene prepping process and how the layout of the scene looks, and hopefully when I get on the right direction for the BG design, this visual will work even better.
Animatic
I have produced my animatic drawings and rough timing on the program Storyboarder. This was a nice program to use as I can easily edit my frames on photoshop if I needed better control of the pen tools or needed to move assets around.
This is the Animatic edit V1 where I have brought in the animatic from storyboarder to Premiere Pro. I added scene and time count, and placeholder music & sounds to capture the actions that are happening.
After my pre-production presentation, I got feedback to add to the 2nd version of my animatic. The main notes given were to build more tension on the inspector’s reaction to the theme park, to make the spinning teacups faster, and to adjust some poses to provide variation in emotion and better direction for animation. I am happy with the feedback and how I am applying it to this version so far, however I need to check the timing on some shots.
In my 3rd version of my animatic I changed shots 4, 5 and 6 so that the alien boss and roller coaster cart pass through the alien operator shots. Beforehand, the lone shot of the roller coaster had less meaning to be shown; it makes more sense in its position now where the operator and baby are. Also, it’s better to establish that Alien boss is still walking forward, so walks past the operator. I adjusted the inspectors anger expressions here. I am much happier with this result, and it will help with how I produce actions and expressions in the animation stage.
I have updated to a 4th version of my animatic for some small details to add in, such as making a few shots last longer, and adjusting sound effects. This will be the final animatic version I will use to reference for sound design, and animation progression.