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Thursday 31 October 2013

Video Logs: The Draft Animatic

Hello Everyone,

This post is once again about Sammy's draft Animatic which you would have already seen by looking at this post here. There have since been updates reaching the conclusion of the final storyboard draft which can be located here. Of course I felt that a little explanation is in order and of course a little snippet of Sammy working in premiere putting the still images together. So in the interest of clarity and to show a little more behind the scenes development I thought I would knock up a little video, and do a post showing where we were and where we are going.

Since starting these little logs I have acquired quite an amount of behind the scenes video so I am trying to use it to educate a little (or not at all). This is my promise to myself more then anything but I think I would have loved to have known how to do all of this a few years ago. The documented video for this post is quite short but I figure the shorter it is the quicker people with short attention spans can move on. These are all Sammy Butler's developments for the story of "& Son" I have included a snippet from her prior Unit 4 work all the way back in Year 1...

So take a look the essence of this story is still here after all!


The video above shows a bit of the editing Process with Polydoodle Pictures Sammy Butler. She is working in premiere putting all of those stills in one by one. The next stage in the process is drawing over them but we will get there. I thought I would just go over it a bit before revealing Sammy's already released initial draft. I think it is Act 1 just leading on to Act 2 right before the second prank from Benjamin. In this case though I have to say we have avoided the "little shit" territory we previously found ourselves at with his character.


Above is a still from the video with Sammy getting her hands dirty with a bit of Premiere pro editing. At this point she did not notice that I had the camera on her so she was not completely on edge. She does quickly suss out that things are not right though... I need to learn more ninja skills. Anyway the long line underneath are some of the scanned storyboards, there are quite a lot aren't there. Maybe I should use this point to tell you that there are over 100 images for our final first draft of this story... We have lots of subtle gesture so that takes quite a lot of drawing individual shots.


I took this opportunity to look at the beginning panels which already feel much more invested in emotion even at this draft stage. I can almost hear the whining widow from the central image. I don't think I realised until just now that she even has a pig nose. Anyway this scene is one of the few to make it from the original "& Son" back from Sammy's unit 4 project. It is quite good though, I was pleased to see the whoopee cushion make a return to this draft. I have kind of childish humour but then I think most geeks like me do. Just can't wait to see it in the final short :)


Feeling a bit nostalgic I went back to Sammys blog and located her original PDF just to take another butchers at how she had this scene originally. It is still pretty awesome even now really. The only thing that made this short suffer in the early stages was there was too much information to fit into the allotted 1:30 max duration. Sammy had to speed up the original just to fit everything in. Also this rendition was much more like a whacky cartoon with a sneaky "little shit" kid. Even the music is upbeat... everyone will be shocked to see what its like now... I cant wait much more morbid!

Its been 2 years since that time when we all sat down at Crits pulling our hair out worrying about every little mistake (I can say that from personal experience). Still I think back to that and I don't think I was as worried as some probably just more tired and beaten by the end. I don't think this project is going to be any different if I'm completely honest. Personally I just cant wait to get down to modelling these characters that's my big win. Then I get a bit of extra time to do some rigging. The plane set is going to be a trial and error experience but it will be fun!

Anyway!

Over & Out,
xXStItChXx

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