Animatic.

I found creating an animatic extremely beneficial when trying to structure the story. Although I had created various sequences which I believed to have had a place within the project I felt that the overall structure of the project was discombobulated and by creating an animatic I was able to gain clarification as to how to arrange the sequences.

I decided to use my thumbnail drawings at this stage as opposed to creating finalised storyboard versions. My reasoning behind this was due to not wanting to waste valuable time creating a more detailed storyboard sequence which could potentially be removed from the story. I preferred using my new rough thumbnail drawings, positioning them within the animatic and once approved could redo the shot/ sequence in greater detail for storyboarding and communication purposes. The new improved storyboard version could then replace the rough version in the animatic at a later stage. Along with placing the sequences in a particular order I was able to identify that some sections of a sequence could be merged with another section of a different sequence to create a stronger one from a visual and communication perspective.

I imported a recorded transcript I had produced in my research to assist the project's structure. Whilst structuring the audio it became apparent to me to use a variety of actors to read the dialogue for the finalised version as this felt intuitively correct. Having imported the audio assisted me in determining where each sequence should be positioned.

What I found challenging during this animatic process was calculating the timing of each scene. The purpose of this animatic was for me to gain a form of structure, however I did feel it was necessary for me to time each sequence as accurately as possible as I wanted to estimate the overall duration of this project to find out if it was feasible to complete. Although the timing of some sequences were not entirely accurate, the animatic had clarified where each sequence should at this time within the process be placed. Moving forward it is my intention to refine the animatic until I feel comfortable with its timing but for now it has served its purpose.

The way I have structured the sequences within the animatic allows me the flexibility to decide whether to include voice narration into the project and it also enables me to move sequences around within the timeline if necessary. I like the freedom to edit and move sequences around when appropriate thus interpreting the animatic as a guide. I see this project as an evolving piece of creativity. As much as I am happy with the overall structure at the moment I am excited to see what other alterations there will be throughout the production process whether it be altering a camera shot, adding in additional animation/ audio content which strengthens the structure of the story, only time will tell.

Editing process:

Rough animatic:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/18b9e9_88884e8f0c5241e5952ab5c05432c330/1080p/mp4/file.mp4