While burning the midnight oil and working like a nut case I finally met my deadline. Woo hoo! Files are sent off and all I have to do now is prepare a Pitch and up-date you guys on what all this oil has been spent on.
It’s been busy but I’m happy with the result and looking forward to the next phase of animating.
But what have I been doing? Well a lot of the time was spent on writing, yes more writing! I rewrote the rhyme which will narrate the animation so as to cut the length by half and in turn the amount I will have to animate. But this also meant that the synopsis had to be adjusted and characters had to be dropped. Barry the Tooth Fairy had to go! The title also has to change due to these changes and now going by ‘A need for a Boogieman’ but this can still be adjusted.
This seems like a ridiculous amount of rewrites but it’s quite normal, especially because it is the foundations to the animation. If I were to rewrite it half way through animating I would have a problem. Now I know that it’s not to long and the plot works.
So what’s it about? Check the log-line:
* Nice is In and Bad is Out and the Boogieman is forced in to a career change and a conflict with the Fairy God Mother, while trying his hand at being the Tooth Fairy*
The next step was to finally get drawing. Yippiee! It feels like a long time since I put pen to paper, so it felt like being let out to play. I needed to give this story shape and characters and thats when the boarding and character design could start.
All in all I think I have drawn around 150 frames for a minute and a half of narration. It sounds like a lot, but in comparisons to how many will be drawn for the animation, this is nothing… Keep typing sam and don’t think about it… :s
Below is the moving storyboard so that you can have a sneaky peak at what I’m up to and have a listen to the narration. For the narration I recorded my own voice, but for the actual animation I think I will go in search of a nice deep male voice. If you know any please let me know. Check out how posh I sound! haha!
I made the moving storyboard by combining hand drawn images, photoshop and adobe Premier. It gives you a good idea of what the animation will be like, the timing and how the narration will be used.
Next up were the Characters. With a bit of sketching and making the storyboard I had a good idea of what the characters would look like. Keeping in mind that the characters will eventually be animated, so I made sure that their figures were simple and the detail kept to a minimum.
And then there came the style frame. What will the animation look like? Below is an example of how the animation should eventually look. I chose to take a shot where the Boogieman is getting ready for his first night on the job as the Tooth Fairy.
Now that the foundations are in place I guess the next step is animating. But not before the Pitch. Yes this is an assignment for my MA but I will have to pitch my plans and win over the jury before I get the go ahead. I think I’ll be ok, although I believe they may ask me if I think I can make the whole thing on my own… It’s going to be a lot of work!
But I have had a look at different animation softwares and think that If I work in combination with cutout animation and bone techniques found in Toon Boom, Anime Pro and Duik in after effects I should come a long way.
So wish me luck! And I shall keep you posted on what I do next.
