Developing my Storyboards and Animatic

Storyboarding is an integral part of developing any form of narrative-driven moving image, so before developing my animation any further I took the time to finalise my storyboards to ensure the animation told a coherent story within a 30 second time frame.  These drawings do not necessarily represent the final character and background designs which will be used in the final animation, but it is important to get a feel for the composition of the shots and the staging of the characters in a scene in the storyboarding process in order to see what works and what can be changed. This means including facial expressions and the primary movements in a scene to give the animator reference for how the shots will play out. In the final animation, more movement will be added to the scene, such as leaves blowing in the breeze, to breathe life into the world and lend to the atmosphere of the scene. Secondary movements will also be included, such as wind blowing the character's hair in order to connect the characters to the environments they are set against. Camera movements are also planned out at this stage. In my animation, these movements are fairly subtle as to not distract from the traditional style of presentation I am going for with this animation.

When the storyboards are finished they are scanned in and edited together in Adobe Premier where sound and music is added. For this animation, from the get go, I had 'Songs from Friday Afternoons' by Benjamin Britten on my mind when I was coming up with the characters and story for the animation, a song used to great effect in Wes Anderson's film 'Moonrise Kingdom'. The song provides the framework for the pace of editing in the animation, as shots change and flow with the song, with particular sound cues ('Cuckoo') dictating when to cut away to the next shot and the rising intonation of the vocals dictating camera movement. I feel that buy building upon a strong framework for the soundscape, this helps connect the audio to the visual elements of the animation, making for an overall more complete and aesthetically satisfying animation.

Final Storyboards