Applied Animation: Documentary - Animatic and Characters

Applied Animation

Animatic and Character Sheets

• This week:
• I worked on the character sheets for Fenrir and Jormungandr and started to put the audio onto the animatic.
• What went well:
• I was able to produce a simple character sheet for both Fenrir and Jormungandr, which fits the style we had decided for the documentary. The designs of both characters are simple, as we decided to opt for more intense shading and highlights. 
• One thing I needed to change, however, was the colour gradients on the characters, as they would not completely work in Toom Boom, if we were to turn them into a puppet. This is why I made an additional character sheet, without the gradients if this doesn't work.
• I additionally produced some expression sheets to explore ways the characters can express during the animation.

Expression Sheets:

• In addition to this, I put together an animatic using Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, in order to understand the software. I had previously made notes on working in Storyboard Pro, as I had done so when a Professional came in to talk about it, last year, however I still looked at video tutorials on the Toon Boom website, to help.
• One thing I noticed about the timing was that there were many held frames, which made the overall duration of our documentary longer. However, as these are held frames, we will be able to keep on top of this. 

Here is the animatic so far:

• What could be improved:
• The character sheets need to be fully explored and placed onto a background, to make sure that they don't blend in too much, but still fit within the "universe". This can be done by creating further concept art, similar to the style of Josephs' already produced backgrounds.
• The animatic needs further development, with more audio and sound effects, which may need to acquired over time.
• We have been actively trying to make changes to our Gantt Chart and schedule to make sure that we are able to produce something in good time. It's complicated at the moment, with the lockdown, however we are working through this.
• Next week:
• Ill be starting keyframes and finishing up the concepts and animatic.