Film Studies and Cinematography - Project 3: Animatic

From this week onwards, it wasn't compulsory for us to come to class as it was only feedback sessions. Still, I went to class this week because I wanted to get my possible final feedback before the rush of catching up to deadlines in the coming weeks. I showed Mr. Kanaan my thumbnails I drew in my sketchbook during the feedback session.

Feedback:

Can remove one panel in scene 2 to make the flow of the scenes more smoothly.
The beginning panels and market panel are a very nicely done panels.

Overall, good progress and thumbnails show maturity in cinematography.

Week 12

This week was online but I did not join as I was focused on a group project on a different module.

Week 13

Did not attend class class this week as I had transport problems (╥﹏╥)

Week 14

This week was Christmas week so no classes were held.

Week 15

I was occupied with New Years celebration with family and was not home for quite a bit hence why I unfortunately couldn't attend the final class this week as well...

▲ back to top ▲

3. PROGRESSION

Task: Students are to produce a 1-3 minute animatics storyboard based on their approved short animation proposal.

3.1 Thumbnails

Before I started drawing, I went back to Project 1 as a reference for the scenes I had in mind. Mainly, I stayed closer to the script.; but when drawing out the scenes, I felt I could add a bit more that wasn't in the initial script because I finally had a proper visual idea of how the story could flow and so that led to additions that helped spice up the story.

The most major additions were:

a title reveal during the earlier scenes
the reason Jesse crashes into the market (swerving from accidentally crashing into a kid)
Jesse having to jump a gap that has a river below

And with that, I started drawing out the scenes I could imagine into my sketchbook.

File 3.1.1 Thumbnails in Sketchbook (Scanned).

The empty spaces were scenes where I couldn't properly imagine but I left it empty to give me a slight idea of the timing. I showed these to Mr. Kanaan for feedback.

Feedback:

Can remove one panel from the earlier panels to make the flow of the scenes more smoothly.
The beginning panels and market panel are a very nicely done panels.
Overall, good progress and thumbnails show maturity in cinematography.

From the feedback, I started digitising the thumbnails so I could get a bigger picture.

Fig 3.1.1 Thumbnails Page 1.

For the first page, I kept close to the initial thumbnails (& edited it based on the feedback I got) and just ensured they were cleaned up.

Fig 3.1.2 Thumbnails Page 2.

As for the second page, I added the necessary scene of Jesse not being able to catch up to the tram and therefore tries to find a different path.

Fig 3.1.3 Thumbnails Page 3.

The third page now has an added and necessary transition from the market scene to the bridge/blocked construction scene.

Fig 3.1.4 Thumbnails Page 4.

From this page onwards, I had to create the thumbnails from scratch as the initial thumbnails stopped at the fall/roll panel. I wanted to give Jesse a bit of a happy moment as she realises she's finally reached the station on time to board the tram. But that celebration is cut off early as the umbrella crashing scene happens and rainwater gets splashed all over her.

Fig 3.1.5 Thumbnails Page 5.

Then this final page is all about building up to that final cut-off scream where everything around Jesse, including her, is in silent shock at her sudden transformation. Then as an added comedic effect, the screen cuts to black then to the credits.

File 3.1.2 Today's Catch - Thumbnails.

▲ back to top ▲

3.2 Storyboard

After the thumbnails were done, I started on the storyboards. I screenshotted the thumbnails for me to trace over and clean up.

Fig 3.2.1 Tracing and Cleaning up over Thumbnails.

There were some mistakes when I did the clean up, like above, in the scene on the right where I accidentally drew Jesse's left hand holding the handlebar instead of holding her umbrella. And so, I fixed that in Fig 3.2.2 and made the hand placement more dynamic-ish.

Fig 3.2.2 Correcting hand placements.

Next, I started coloring in the panels, making sure I separated the background and subject (Jesse) so that it would be easier for me to possibly use them separately in the animatic portion of the project.

Additionally, I added some panels to some shots that needed an extra panel to properly convey the action Jesse was doing. An example is in Scene 4 Shot 2 where I held it for one panel longer to show her being distracted then putting her attention back on the road.

Fig 3.2.3 Colouring and adding panels.

After than I went to using red arrows and lines to convey the camera movement and also additional movement done by Jesse or background characters.

Fig 3.2.4 Adding red line notes for camera movement.

For thinking of the duration, I had a long silent session of closing my eyes and imagining each scene and holding a stop watch on phone while doing so. It might not be the best at gauging the duration of the scenes but it gave a a good idea of how long each scene would be without stressing too much about it.

Thankfully, the whole duration of the animation came down to around 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

Fig 3.2.5 Duration notes (secs).

Then, I displayed the duration for each shot and also added in all the noted for Action, Sound and also Notes for the Camera Shot Size and additional stuff

Fig 3.2.6 Adding notes.

File 3.2.1 Today's Catch - Storyboard.

▲ back to top ▲

3.3 Animatic

Moving to the actual animatic-making, I screenshotted the panels with as high quality as I could get them to be and imported them into Premiere Pro.

Fig 3.3.1 Importing screenshots into Premiere Pro.

I then started to time each panel to a believable duration; referencing the storyboard's notes.

Fig 3.3.2 Timing each panel.

Video 3.3.1 Animatic - Timing.

Afterwards, I brought the video into Photoshop to start drawing out some breakdowns to the animatic to give it more motion. Halfway, I'd slightly regret doing so as Photoshop isn't exactly built for creating 2 minute animatics. That or I still have a lot Photoshop and the potential of the Timeline window. I had problems mainly with the display of the timeline. and how I could accidentally select layers which were were far apart.

Fig 3.3.3 Animating in Photoshop.

Anyways, after finishing up the "breakdowns" I exported the video into Premiere Pro again.

Fig 3.3.4 Editing camera movement.

This time though, I worked on the camera movements which were mainly zoom ins and pans.

▲ back to top ▲

3.4 Audio Editing

To make the animatic more interesting I of course had to add sound effects and music to it as well. I sourced the sound effects from Freesound.org and Pixabay. I referenced the notes from the storyboard for what sound effects were needed for and to my surprise, I needed a LOT...

Fig 3.4.1 SFX files arrangement.

After about an hour of scouring the sites for sound effects, I renamed then arranged them all and imported them into Premiere Pro, and started the placement for each sound.

Fig 3.4.2 Importing files to Premier Pro with Animatic.

For the dialogue, I recorded them myself in a sound recorder on my laptop. It wasn't the cleanest audio but I had to make do with it.

Fig 3.4.3 Recording dialogue on Sound Recorder.

I then played around with EQs for some sounds; especially the dialogue where my voice is coming out a phone.

Fig 3.4.4 Playing with EQ.

Because I wanted to add a bit of depth to the sound, I keyframed some so that they would gain/lose volume based on how close they were to the camera.

Fig 3.4.5 Keyframing volume.

Finally, I felt the animatic was a bit quiet; so, I decided to search for music that could help amp up the actions more. Thankfully i found a good match on YouTube:

Video 3.4.1 Epic Chase Music by FesliyanStudios Background Music.

The next part is not part of Sound editing but I had to make some final additions (like the storyboard panel number and timecode) before I could properly finalise it. For the timecode, I had to search up a tutorial on YouTube on how to do it but I managed it in the end.

Fig 3.4.5 Editing in timecode and panel number.

You will see the final product in the next section ! (˶ˆᗜˆ˵)

▲ back to top ▲

4. FINAL

Thumbnails

File 4.1 Today's Catch - Thumbnails.

Storyboard

File 4.2 Today's Catch - Storyboard.

Animatic

File 4.3 Today's Catch - Animatic.

View all files here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gS_Cptuqc84wYOD6ZoKRGVVOaFb-F_kz?usp=drive_link

▲ back to top ▲

4. REFLECTION

I had quite a fun time with this project! When it came to actual drawing, I found that I was really in my element. As I had previous experience with making animatics, this was a bit easier for me; of course, I had struggled her and there.

Speaking of struggles, I found that it was a bit hard for me to stay on-model/design for Jesse. I know it's only an animatic and all details don't necessarily have to be there but I feel that I could've done better on that aspect. Another thing I struggled with was trying to find the proper program to actually do my animatics since I've been accustomed to using Photoshop for the general breakdowns between panels but working on this project made me realise it wasn't really the best program to use for animatics of this extent. This ultimately led to me not having the most dynamic camera movement as I wanted but now I've learned!

Aside from the downsides, I've now learned more about a better workflow to use for creating animatics since I usually just jump the shark to storyboards rather than creating thumbnails before hand. This additional preparation actually helped me a lot in visualising the shole animated short in a way that wasn't detailed.

Overall, this project was a very good one for me to get through and an insightful one at that. I'm sure this has helped in my skills that I hope to apply during my future internship and also jobs!

▲ back to top ▲

🐠

Qistina Nuralya Maria Binti Azly (0354180)

Search This Blog

Film Studies and Cinematography - Project 3: Animatic

Table of contents

Comments

Post a Comment