Browsing YouTube, I came across a video that spoke through the use of Animatic. I have learnt quite a few things from the video, such as the main points of animatic, these being getting the pacing and the flow of camera work, the interactions of the characters, but also the sketches and the drawings in the animatic video being produced very rough as they should be mainly focused on timing and so that the whole video is motion-focused.
The presenter has showed his animatic storyboard and placed the overall result in the top right corner. I think this really helped me to understand how rough the drawings were at the beginning and that in some cases, he didn't stick to the plan at all times. The characters also lacked detail, which isn't important at this stage, and they also lacked movement, such as their mouths' movement, however he was spot on with the camera angles and the positions of the characters. He used Adobe Flash to produce the animation.
I have also come across this video; it is Pixar's Director, Mark Andrews, giving a lecture about his storyboard. He studied animation at the Character Animation Program at CalArts, and directed a short Pixar film One Man Band, as well as Brave.
I have picked up a couple of advice from this video too, such as putting myself in a situation where I have little skill and limited time to briefly tell the story to my audience, so that the sketches sell themselves and give the information. I have also noticed that under some of the frames, where there was dialogue, it was written underneath, which gave it a nice flow to the story and a simple understanding to the viewers.
He would be given 2 weeks to complete the storyboard. He takes a week and a half to think about it. The entire storyboard took him 3 days to sketch. I have learnt that when he had the idea in his head, he began sketching out scenes. His first sketch included the man on the table, followed by the deserted scenery and the birds. This has given me a good starting point to help me think more about my own storyboard and start sketching scenes or characters to explore options for my task.
He told his students that it isn't necessary to start at the beginning of the storyboard, and that you can start from whatever point you're most comfortable with and patch it around, such as editing it in a variety of ways, or getting rid of unnecessary shots, or perhaps change the few shots into a single shot. Its the time to mess up, and its good to occasionally ask for feedback to see if others understand your progress.
Its best to avoid thumb nailing and then not being satisfied with the outcome because you'll be doing double the work.
Here are some examples of animatic storyboards used for the same task as I am working on. These two storyboards were created for Gorillaz two music videos; Clint Eastwood and Dirty Harry.
Here is the actual completed music video.
This is another music video of Gorillaz, however the music is in the style of a storyboard, and although there isn't much movement going on in the characters, the frames are expressive enough to allow the shots to flow. The colouring has also given it a semi-finished look with the sketches still seen.
As decided before, I began generating my ideas down onto paper as I'm best with a pencil in my hand. I didn't think of what to have at the beginning, middle, or end of the music video. I sketched down any scenes I believe could be included within the music video. I hoped to think of many camera angles, shots and composition of the frame. Although I didn't sketch all the frames in the music video, a few have definitely extended my thinking that I transferred onto Adobe Photoshop.
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Whilst sketching out the animatic in photoshop, I decided to use red for when the animals were in their glass animal forms, green when they were miniature animals, purple when a glitch occurred, and black for anything that is a background or part of the surroundings.
