Studio Practice: Weekly Production Diary- Applied Animation Week 8

Storyboards

This week we created the storyboards for our animation. I was given two scenes to storyboard; the park scene and the final scene of the animation. I used blue and red colours to differentiate between the characters and the backgrounds/environments, which is useful when it comes to creating the final assets for the animation, as well as for the animatic.

Park Scene

In the script, the scene in the park is relatively short, consisting of a single wide master shot of Keith sitting on a park bench addressing the camera while ignoring a homeless person lugging a comically oversized bag to the edge of the frame. One of the rules of visual comedy I have picked up on is that physical comedy is best accommodated when played out in a wide master shot; a technique used by many physical comedians in the Silent Film era, such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. There is an interesting video essay on the subject in Director Edgar Wrights work by Tony Zhou from every frame a painting (see below) which served as a great reference for staging visual comedy.

Every Frame a Painting: How to do Visual Comedy

Keith Addresses the camera as he attempts to wrap up his documentary

The final scene proved difficult to Storyboard, as in the script it is outlined as a single continuous shot in which the cameraman pivots in the scene, which is hard to achieve when not working in 3D space. As a work-around, in order to transition between these two perspective changes, the cameraman pans the camera towards his feet briefly before tilting the camera back up to a different angle.

Keith is surrounded by passers by

For the final scene I boarded, the main character of Keith goes on a ranting monologue at the crowd which has gathered around him, During his outburst, as outlined in the script, the comments of various internet commenters begin appearing on the screen, as the fourth wall is shattered and the fabric of the documentary begins to crumble. I plan on elaborating on the details of this aspect of the scene in an animatic, as I feel in it's current form, it's unclear to anyone who hasn't already read the script. I also plan on incorporating more key poses in the final animatic, in order to emphasise character through body language and posture. I will make sure to record temporary dialogue in the future to use as reference for the pacing of the character's key poses.

Keith rants at a crowd of onlookers

Keith walks off into the sunset, flipping off a homeless person

Background Reference

Before creating the background I went on a location scout to find suitable photographs to use as reference for creating the backgrounds in our animation. Referring to the storyboards I made a list of shots I needed for the animation and went around Leeds one afternoon to try and cover as much ground as I could, starting off in Hyde Park before walking down towards the city centre.

Hyde Park, Leeds

Leeds City Centre

Leeds High Street

After taking some reference photographs of Hyde Park, I decided to take elements from my reference imagery and created a quick background in Photoshop. I used the eyedropper tool to extract colour from my reference photographs in order to make the backgrounds look damp and overcast; with dull muddied colours. However after feedback from the group we decided a more scrappy-style was needed in order to allow the characters to properly stand out in the frame. There was also the issue of time, as it would have proved time consuming to produce around a dozen of these backgrounds to a more polished standard in the time we have left. Instead, Tess and Brogan have opted to use my photographs as reference for monoprint, which they will then composite with my original photographs in photoshop to create the backgrounds.