Storyboard / Animatic

Today I started on creating my storyboard and animatic. I decided that I am going to create my work on photoshop using my Cintiq. I also decided that I am going to work on my hardest scene first and leave the easiest scene to last.

Scene one:

This is the first scene of the animatic, this scene was easy to do and easy to sketch out.


Scene two:

The second scene is of a close up of the man looking angry.

Scene three:

The entrance to the forest then the head of the man bobs in with his speech bubble then the girls head and finger with her speech bubble.

Scene four:

The forest is bright and normal and then the opacity drops with a darker version coming through and the characters running through the forest.
when creating the darker scene I realised that I could do one dark scene for the section in the forest, as you can see that one is better then the other, so I have decided that I will use the second one, it has a better design and will work better in the situation.

Scene five:

This scene you will have a gap in between two trees and the two character will fade in and out looking through the gap, this is one of the best scene, it was really easy to do.

Scene six:

The last and final scene will be the hardest one to create, I feel like painting this is going to hard and annoying. it was also annoying because I didn't know what I would draw because I had to create a nice and lovely background. I was able to come up with this but I realised that it would be the hardest scene to re create, which made me think of what scene to do first and what scene to do last. I have decided that I will create the last scene first and then the third scene, scene four, scene five, scene two and then scene one. By creating the scenes this way will be better for me, I will be able to get the hardest scenes out the way.

Once the rough scenes were created, I then went into After effects and created the motion and the animatic. I had lots of problems when it came to exporting at first the sound wouldn't export but I went through the render settings and saw that there was a box with Audio output so I ticked that and that solved the sound. Another big problem was that the file wouldn't play after I exported it, I think this was because the file was too big, the file was 9 GB so I then exported it again but at a lower resolution, the size dropped to 1 GB, and then it played. I will have to keep this in mind for the final export, I am going to try and finish the movie a day before. Drawing the animatic was easy and not a problem at all thanks to having the Cintiq. I also had a problem with creating the speech bubble. I created them in photoshop but I could get them in to aftereffects on their own, and I wasn't able to fade them in and out like I wanted.

Animatic

I sent this to my client and his reply was that

"The rough outline you created for the strip looks really good, I can't wait to see how it looks when its fully complete.
The fading in of the speech bubbles is best especially for the last scene."

Sketch designs

My Client and I have worked together before so having the design aspect of the characters has already been done. 

These images show the character designs and finished comic strips that I have done with the same characters before. As you can see that there is continuity between the characters and the colours used, and this will be the same for this animated comic strip. The last image above is shows me trying out the different styles, it shows the normal style, comic style, manga style and cartoon style.

I recently obtained a Wacom Cintiq tablet, this will save me the time of drawing and inking on paper and then scanning in the images. Now I have the Cintiq I am able to draw, ink, colour and paint straight into Photoshop so with this I have been practising on creating a character and testing out the quality of work.

As you can see there is a difference between the images from before and after me obtaining the Cintiq. The production process is now a lot easier and at better quality. I have use many different tutorials but Digital Tutor's gave me a course with a series of lessons on painting, sketching and inking. The tutorials also helped me learn more about photoshop itself, I learnt how to use the brushes properly and how to create my own brushes.

As you can see the screenshot, this is the brushes window, I learnt what different sections mean the main two I have ticked is Shape Dynamics and smoothing; I think I would use the Transfer section when I am shading, to help it blend. This new way of creating the background and the characters is helpful for my work. This was an amazing test with great results, and I can't wait to create all the scenes this way.