Storyboard Explorations

So both Erin and Emily came up with two varying styles of storyboards for our plot line. Erin's had some dark humor in it while Emily's was light and child friendly. Both main characters wanted to discover fairies, one just wanted proof they existed with his camera the other was just following a map (later evolved to him needing fairy wings for a potion).

   

Getting some inputs on our drafts, Here's some from Sara. Next up was Sandy.

So the story's these two put their two cents on goes as follows...

Emily's: Our character is on a mission to prove fairies exist. He's been teased for believing in them for as long as he can remember, so he wants to prove everyone wrong. Along his adventures he stumbles upon Nessie, who upon seeing his camera makes sure to give him a pose or two, the boy who won't be deterred just puts up his map and continues on. Nessie was not pleased. He continues on and thinks he hears a fairy, only to scare a Wulver who was delivering fish to a family. He stumbles across one or two more characters on his journey, all he ignores cause they are not his target. Finally he comes across a fairy and takes his pictures. The fairy though, asks him not to keep them. As fairies are a secret no one should know of, or else they'd take advantage of the folk. Our character is undecided, in the end he does the right thing and deletes the photos. He receives a gift from our lovely fairy and is happy to have done right by the creature he cared about. However he has his camera, and it's empty. What to do what to do, so he follows his tracks and makes a photo collection of all those other creatures he underrated. To come home with a memory card full and no idea what to do with all the photos of Nessie.

 

Photo of a page of Emily's first Draft

Erin's: in her tale of woe, the main character is stumbling on all sorts of creatures he doesn't need. Exaggerated faces on both creatures and characters adds humor throughout the storyline. Finally as he takes a break for food, a Kelpie stumbles upon him. Kelpies being a water spirit that drowns it's victims. He's disguised and has a sign saying free ride to the Fairy's but our character isn't fooled, he smells something fishy going on and he takes off running! The kelpie disliking its meal leaving, transforms to its tar like gruesome form and takes off after the boy, while running a fairy flys the boy, moving as if in slow motion. It frustrates the boy his goal was so close, and with this slight distraction the kelpie over takes our character and forces him to be stuck to his hide. Then gleefully the end clips show the kelpie prancing back to the water so as to drown and eat our character.

 A photo of a page from Erin's draft.

After a few days of working on these storylines and creating two roughs, we decided on the dark humor of Erin's plot line. Both Emily and Erin will create a third draft of the same plot line, that we will combine with favorite shots and scenes from each. We will then import that into photoshop and work on creating a digital and final version. In the mean time, I am working on sound bits and finding Celtic/Gaelic music that will be used as our audio sound track.


Emily and Erin Discussing the drafts at Rose Angle Cafe.

Storylines, Storylines, Storylines.

After a long weekend of exploring, and an extraordinary day in Edinburgh on Monday. Tuesday started us off exhausted but excited to continue our work.

 

A group meeting started us off. Throwing out ideas from the storylines we'd developed. They ranged from a clip show of sorts with many versions, 1 scene with the character moving in it, a character finding a place to meditate and being disturbed where ever he went, a duck drinking tea, a paranoid women afraid of forgetting something and the house being flooded or destroyed and being over anxious finally resolves her paranoid feelings to end with her house on fire, alien invasions with different results then you believed, a Godzilla attack and multiple character reactions to the event throughout the city, the list continues from there...

We each decided on one from each of our sections, to then create a nugget. This nugget we searched photos for to see which one we liked, inspired us the most and then laid it out in indesign. Our Final 3 were a clip show combining the scenes of multiple Scottish Mythological creatures, a dramatic scene of drinking tea (by duck or human), and the woman's house burning down.

After a full day of creating nuggets, brainstorming how the 3 would play out, and Emily doing some more acting, we settled on our favorite. The clip show of Scottish Mythology. Here we did not decide on a final course of action with the clip show, from here we separated and started to storyboard mini scripts of how this clip show would play out.

 

We got some info from one of our instructors on Act set ups in a story and Theme combinations. This lead us to some base story ideas, for the clip show. One being; The character needed proof fairies exist, and through his travels he comes across more then just fairies and ignores them all for his proof. We used the creatures as obstacles he had to overcome through his adventure. The next few days were of storyboarding. I was out sick for Wednesday and Thursday both Erin and Emily had solid first drafts on the story that they were progressing to a second draft and I felt my resources would be best continuing onto more technical things then drawing out a rough draft myself. I began the base for the blog and researching music we could use.

Inspiration Explosion

So, we were given "The Brief"... Very open ended, very not what we were expect. How to continue hmmm....

We split up for a bit, then came back together and brainstormed, we wanted to see who was inspiring us for this animatics. Inspirations that bloomed where Chuck Jones styled humor, the Looney Toons slapstick animation. Something Geometic and simplified. Something minimalistic, do we want detailed backgrounds, detailed characters. How many characters, (eh, not more then 3 maybe), Is it gonna be themed? Fantasy styled, realistic, sci-fy? Tied to Reality, expressive faces. These were some random notes taken from our Idea Brainstorm. We watched some videos, and discussed if we had any Ideas. One that came up, was to base it on a character traveling and visiting places, similarly to what we were doing.

I'm trying to be sly.... Did it work?

Our character evolved to a dragon, who had very bad luck on his trip. Horrible plane food, crushed by rocks, large backpack that was twice his size. Things did not always flow well for him. This was the idea we ended on that first day of studio time. We got a good sense of our combined humor and the direction we wanted to go in. But we didn't solidify our idea of what our character was going to do. We established some time to brainstorm ideas and to come up with 3-4 different storylines to explore for the project. Then Emily got dragged into another of the Master Student's film projects. He was making a combined 3D modeled animation mixed with a Filmed short. They needed a female role and she was immediately up for the task. That day ended good.

 
Brianstorm, discuss, brainstorm, discuss repeat until success if found!

We traveled and explored the local area our first weekend. We'd had rain 5 days straight and Saturday finally lightened up. So we took advantage of that and didn't regroup until Tuesday, the 21st.

Emily working her scene in the hallway!

"The Brief"

So, coming into this program, we did not really know what to expect. Four of us planned on doing the animation section, but after some touring our professor, Sandy, bailed on us. She decided to do some lithographic printing instead, pssh fine art work (Animation is a ton better ;)). Anywho, the way the other artists work during this month was planned out to be an exploration of sorts, and you could choose to dabble and explore what ever medium you wanted. This kinda made us think that's how our program was gonna go in animation. We'd get to explore the sections of animation we all wanted to learn about, however when we got there, our objective changed. They ended up having a prepared project of sorts, open ended but having us actually act and work like we were in an production setting. We could choose to all make seperate animatics or work together and make one. The school here describes this as a Brief.

So we got a goal, information, directions on the process, what they expect for outcomes, and the aims of this project. I'm gonna go into some details for you guys, so you can understand our thought process through our brainstorming.

For some background on Animatics, an animatic is 'a preliminary sequence of shots, images or sketches (as for a movie or an animated television program) that is filmed or arranged usually with a sound track and viewed to determine its effectiveness before being finalized.'

 

Us doing some work

Our end goal for this month is to create a script, storyboard and animatics for a short 1-2 minute animated animation or film. The overall brief is open, our choice of story, scenario, genre and style. Our inspiration was left open to us by them, we've personally decided to pull upon our experiences of being here in Scotland to inspire our story, though some of our ideas were off the wall and a few didn't even go with our main inspiration. But that's the fun of being able to do whatever we want.


Stage 1- Script development
    Boil down our idea to an 'uber' pitch, two lines or less, that sums up our film. Develop into a synopsis, and there work up a shot for shot script.

Stage 2- Storyboarding
   Storyboard our script, complete with suggested camera angles, amount of shots and timing.

Stage 3-Animatics Production
   Create a timed animatics, based on your storyboard, add any sound FX and music and prepare and edit utilizing the appropriate software.

So far we have finished stage one, and combined it into Stage two. We just finalized our story idea today, the 26th, and we were given the brief on the 16th. So all in all we're 10 days into working on our project and have made some great progress.

The Outcomes we want, is upon completion we will be able to demonstrate a greater understanding of animatics practices and how to apply their studio practice skills to a project. Our Aims of the class is to contextualise animation and digital film practice skills within an environment that emulates the professional workplace. This module will enable us to create a production of an animatic. This will provide us with experience of managing relationships in a team and the development of transferable professional skills.

We are already seeing the development of having transferable skills, as we've sectioned out each others strengths and letting us use them to our advantage during this project. An example would be, Erin and Emily have been focusing on the drawing, camera angles and making the story come to life, while I, Ashley, have been focusing on the technical aspects and just giving ideas during group meetings. This has allowed our current skills to flourish and us to work at a quicker pace then when working by ourselves.

So this was a chunkier information part of the project, the rest will include more photos and actions shots on what we've been doing and what is to come! But this gives you the information we were given and inspired by to continue on with in making this production which has yet to be named.

Ashley Derrer Bio

Ashley Derrer

My artwork is inspired by people and emotions. Color has become a large influence as well. My main focus has started to gravitate towards characters and 3D modeling. In focusing on those technical skills I'm exploring the conceptual side of them. Trying to add genuine emotion and creating a character that evokes a feeling in the audience.

Emily Allison Bio

We're all masquerading as me, because I have a gmail account. So... Maybe I can take all the credit?
 Kidding.

Emily Allison
 
I enjoy a wide variety of mediums in both 2D and 3D, but my favorites are clay, colored pencil (best when layered over watercolor), chalk pastel (especially on a sidewalk), pencil, and ink.
I have a penchant for including humor in my artwork: usually lighthearted, but not exclusively. I like pieces that make people smile and laugh, and then stop and think. I like art that entertains or tells a story, so naturally, I am drawn* to animation. Animated shows and movies have continued to be my favorite genre since childhood because I grew up with them, or perhaps because I never did "grow up."

*(no pun intended)

Erin Chon Bio

Erin Chon

Erin was the kind of kid who indulged in far too many cartoons and animated films. Yet, it was this visual feast that would later inspire her to pursue a career in visual storytelling. Her passion is engraved within the animated and graphic novel art form and by the support of her peers, and passion to learn, Erin was able to achieve such projects like "Lavender." Erin continues to peruse her career as a visual storyteller through her most recent project, "Dandelion Anthology."

Introductions!

Hey all, let's start off with some introductions!

I am Ashley Derrer, I will probably be the main writer for the blog. Though, because I'm not using my cell phone while abroad I have to masquerede as Emily most of the time. Google and its texting verifications.... Anywho, I have just graduated from Alma College with a BA in Art and Design. My emphasis revolving around 3D modeling and character creation.

Erin Chon is working on this project as well. She graduated in 2015 from Alma College. She received her BFA in Illustration, with an emphasis of self study in Animation. She has worked with mainly traditionally drawn hand animation in comparison to my computer 3D animation.

Lastly there is Emily Allison. She is going into her senior year at Alma College (graduates in 2017), she is a BFA candidate in drawing and illustration. She is exploring animation as a venue to take her drawing skills into.

For a month we are in Dundee, Scotland working with Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) within the University of Dundee. In total we will only being having two weeks of studio time to create a collaborated animatic. The rest of the scheduled month is time we have invested in field trips and weekends exploring.

This blog will focus on our process of creating the animatic and relevant cases of our field trips that inspire us. We have already been here since the 13th of June, so just a little behind in creating the blog.

I'll be uploading some more posts of the days we've already begun the work as well as uploading our Brief we were given so as to start this animatic.

Hope to update as consistently as possible, glad to have you guys reading!