In the very beginning of this course we were tasked with rolling a picture dice in group, and whatever these dice resulted in we had to create a story on. We had gotten pirates, and when it came to developing a short story we used a whiteboard to briefly come up with a narrative based on the pictures we received. This was a nice small ice breaker exercise and introduced us to creative thinking through narrative and working in teams to develop ideas and tell our input. We also gave a brief presentation to the class to discuss our over arching idea, this exercise giving us a glimpse on what the main project would expect of us.
In terms of telling a story we were also shown the format of the “Hero’s Journey”, which could be found in a large selection of fairytales and well known stories, such as Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. The structure always involves a hero who goes on an adventure, learns a lesson, wins a victory with that newfound knowledge, and then returns home transformed. This narrative structure helped us form our narrative for our 30 second animated short. I always enjoyed writing my own original works and ironically never heard of the Hero’s Journey before, so I came away from the lesson with the newfound knowledge and skillset to improve my own narrative telling’s.
INITIAL PLANNING STAGES:
When it came time to form groups I felt a little bit of panic setting in as at that point I didn’t really get to know a lot of people from my class. In the end me, Andrea, Ellen, Kaitlyn and Aaron formed a group, all of which we had worked with before in the previous 2D animation project which I was happy to see a few familiar faces. With our group formed we learned that the theme for the project was to be “Escape” and was tasked to brainstorm ideas and narratives that would correspond with this theme. Below was the result of our initial ideas. Mine consisted of the DND board game, claw machine, cat escaping a roomba, stuck in a dream, magician escape act and escape rooms, providing small intel on references we could look at for other ideas.
Andrea proceeded to upload our most liked ideas and put them in a list, allowing us to vote for a single main story focus. In the end the claw machine idea won, which I was really excited for due to the multiple sources and creative liberties we could have with that idea.
We then dabbled in story structure. Admittedly despite being excited about the design aspect of our idea it was hard to come up with an entertaining storyline. We got together as a team and used the whiteboard again to devise a plan and tried to make sense of a story for the animation. I wrote in the red/pink. We discussed the story in terms of the beginning vs ending, and what happens in between. I was confident in what the animation could start off as, from the perspective of the arcade and slowly panning towards our main machine, however in terms of story itself it was difficult. Ellen suggested the toys could be fighting the main toy for the claw, or attempting to ruin the main toys chances of getting out of the machine, so that’s one solid idea that we went with.
Below is the other side of the board above. We briefly spoke about shots and what angles/framing could be used in support of the story/comedic effects. Also discussed if there was someone controlling the machine and how we could show a person if we couldn’t show legs. We used Wii “Mii’s” as inspiration for the human. Since the toys were going to have a cartoonish design the human model didn’t need to be realistic, or have the human form be seen at all. We discussed different options, like how it could be implied that there was someone there through a shadow/silhouette. The main focus was going to be the world the toys are living in, inside of the machine and oblivious to the outside world, so the focus on the human wasn’t necessary.
We all created our own individual storyboards based off the idea that the toys are sabotaging the main character, this is my conclusion based off of the class discussion and notes on the whiteboard. We mused that the short could be called “Get a Grip”, we thought it was a fun title so we kept it. We were aiming for a humorous ending, Ellen and Andrea suggested that the toy could be brushed up to throw away in the end.
Andrea took down the feedback from the lecturers in terms of the narrative direction we were taking:
The week after only me, Andrea and Aaron was present, so we kept in mind the notes from the presentation and altered elements to support the feedback given. Aaron suggested that the claw itself could also be a character, which opened up the story to a lot more possibilities. We talked about the claw could resemble a “snake” and the toys could be modelled to be various animals, equal to prey. This had also opened the claw and set to have more freedom in character/set design. We had also talked about the design of the main character and the visual gag that the one controlling the claw is mostly in it to grab the money, compared to the other toys who were without.
Based off of this new development we revised old storyboards and fit it to make sense of the current narrative we were intending to create. Below was my own revision, taking shots I liked from my previous storyboard and implementing them into the new.
We then sat down as a group the following class to create a finalized storyboard. We voted on sections that we liked the best and Andrea implemented them to create a consistent flow. We all had good input in balancing shots.
ALLOCATING SECTIONS OF THE ANIMATION.
I was tasked with making a refined version of our final storyboard, now that we were happy with the shots and general order. This way there was a clear visualisation on how the shots transitions from one another. At this stage we had shared our character designs with one another (excluding the claw) so I implemented our characters into the scenes. I had also vaguely took lighting into consideration when adding tonal values.
After this I made a quick edit/animatic on how the animation could be timed based off of the refined storyboard. It was difficult to include everything in the storyboard within the 30 seconds, however asking Alec down the line sated our concern when he said it could be over if needed.
Andrea had proceeded to divide the storyboard into sections/colours, letting us choose on discord what section of the short we wanted to animate. The ending really appealed to me, and I had ideas on how to conclude the short through using the storyboard, so I chose that section. I was weary in case I chose anyone’s section that they really wanted to animate so I chose last, but it worked out in the end.
