Film Studies & Cinematography / Task 3 / Animatic Storyboard Production

19.6.2024 - 11.8.2024 (Week 8 - Week 15)
Elysa Wee Qi En / 0355060 / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Film Studies & Cinematography
Task 3 / Animatic Storyboard Production

LECTURES 

All lectures were covered in Task 1 and Task 2.

INSTRUCTIONS

Fig. 1. Module Information Booklet

Task 3: Animatic Storyboard Production

For this assignment, we were tasked with creating thumbnail sketches, a storyboard and an animatic based on the story that we created for Project 1. 

I started by creating thumbnail sketches based on the script I had made. But along the way a suitable audio popped into my head, so I continued drawing the thumbnail sketches and then the storyboard with that song in mind. It was called 'Engeki' by Nanou, and I used the instrumental for this project. 

Since the story is about the main character taking part in singing performances, this instrumental seemed fitting due to its strong climaxes and soft parts. It seemed suitable for the story and how the main character's confidence grew through it. It also helped me to imagine a nice climax and ending scene for the story.

Fig. 2.1. Cutting the audio (11/8/2024)

Fig. 2.2. Drawing the storyboard (11-12/8/2024)

After completing the storyboard, I exported all the artboards and imported them into Adobe After Effects. I used masking to get rid of the arrows and separate elements to keyframe movement.

Fig. 2.2. Keyframing movement (12/8/2024)

FINAL Project 3 Submissions

Fig. 3.1. Thumbnail Sketches (12/8/2024)

Fig. 3.2. Storyboard (12/8/2024)

Fig. 3.3. Animatic (12/8/2024)

REFLECTIONS

Experience
This was definitely an experience. As a child I was exposed to a lot of animatics, and even now sometimes when I hear a song that gets my creativity running, I manage to create animatics and stories in my head. Because of that, getting a chance to create my own animatic with my own character(s) and story was truly an experience. Of course, it's something I could've tried on my own time, but since my art isn't as good as I'd like it to be yet, I tend to abandon such projects halfway. Therefore having it be a school project that I have to see through to the end made me have to finish it. 

Observations
I do have a friend who is much more experience with drawing and creating such projects than me, so it's nice to know I have not only a benchmark to aim towards but something to observe and analyse to learn from. The way she created her animatic was not by animating her storyboard, but in the more advanced way of drawing each frame by hand, the step before full-fledged animation.

Findings
Drawing a storyboard and animating it into an animatic actually take a long time. This could be because of my lack of experience, but I guess I still underestimated how time consuming it is. And also, my hand, shoulder, arm etc. cramped kinda painfully near the end, so I now understand the amount of time it takes to create such things and the importance of taking breaks after drawing so much.