Film Studies and Cinematography/Final Project – Storyboard and Animatic

 -SPETEMBER 24, 2024

01/12/2024 - 29/12/2024 (Week 10 – Week 14)

Wang Yifan / 0368363

Film Studies and Cinematography / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylors University

Final Project – Storyboard and Animatic

INSTRUCTIONS

 

Final Project: Storyboard and Animatics

The objective of this project is to produce a 1-3 minute animatics storyboard based on your approved short animation. In this project, the animatic storyboard production must be based on the proposed story ideas developed for Project 1. 

Deliverables:

   1. Thumbnail drawing (10%)

   2. Storyboard (10%)

   3. Animatic (10%)

Thumbnail Drawing

I started to draw thumbnail storyboards based on the script I wrote in Project 1. During the drawing process, I think the most critical point is to carefully consider how to present the storyline through camera angles. This will not only make the story more attractive, but also clearly convey the core content of each scene. I drew it according to 3-act structure. 

I use storyboards: break down the plot, position characters and camera angles.

Sketch: hand-draw sketches to highlight key plot points.

Sequencing: arrange shots in chronological order, label emotions or actions.

Finishing: clarify lines and add text to explain the three-act structure

Thumbnail Drawing #1 (W9)

Thumbnail Drawing #2 (W9)

Thumbnail Drawing #3 (W9)

Thumbnail Drawing #4 (W9)

Thumbnail Drawing #5 (W9)

Storyboard 

After completing the thumbnail drawing, I proceeded to the storyboard. In week 11, I drew the storyboard with the characters while referring to the thumbnail drawing. I drew the storyboard on Procreate since I am more familiar with it. I also wrote down the actions of each scene in the storyboard. 

Break down the shots: break down the story into key shots, annotate the main actions and emotions.

Sketch: quickly draw a simple picture of each shot, highlighting the main information.

Sequence the shots: arrange the shots by time or narrative logic.

Finish the output: clean up the lines and add necessary text descriptions.

Storyboard #1 (W11)

I use different colors to represent ideas. Black is the storyboard description, red indicates the action direction, and blue expresses the emotions or thoughts at the time.

Storyboard #2 (W11)

Storyboard #3 (W11)

Storyboard #4 (W11)

Storyboard #5 (W11)

Storyboard #6 (W11)

Storyboard #7 (W11)

Animatics

After finishing the storyboard, I continue to animate the project. Some scenes, I keep as images. For most scenes, I animate each scene individually, not in too much detail, to animate. After drawing and animating all the scenes, I will edit.

Compiling Scenes

After that, I made a list of the sound effects I needed and found them on the sound effects library. I chose a soothing instrumental music as the background music.

Animatics with SFX

I incorporated background music and adjusted it to fit the scene. Since the music wasn’t specifically composed for this project, I edited it and added audio transitions to improve the flow. Despite my efforts to sync the music with the animation, a few sections felt slightly off, but overall, I believe it worked reasonably well.

Final Project: Storyboard and Animatics

Thumbnail Drawing

Storyboard

Final Animatics

REFLECTION

For this final project, I was initially very nervous because I felt it was going to be a long journey. We had to complete everything from creating thumbnails, storyboarding, animating each scene, editing scenes, and adding sound effects and background music. To manage this, I set a goal to make progress every week.

I started with drawing thumbnails, which, fortunately, were just rough sketches. I didn’t need to draw detailed characters; it was more about deciding the camera angles and types of shots for each scene. With Mr. Kamal’s guidance, I completed this phase. By week 11, I finished the thumbnails and moved on to creating the storyboard. For the storyboard, I realized it needed to be more detailed and clearer, showing where characters, expressions, and actions would appear in each scene. While working on the storyboard, I tried to refine the storyline to make it more meaningful. I came to understand how crucial the storyboard is, as I followed and referenced it closely when animating.

Luckily, we didn’t have to make highly detailed animations. I illustrated all the scenes and animated most of them, while leaving a few as static images. I spent the majority of my time on animation, as some scenes required frame-by-frame work. Afterward, I exported all the scenes and compiled them, adjusting the duration of the images to ensure the timing didn’t feel too slow.

Next, I added sound effects and background music. Background music was particularly challenging because some parts didn’t match the scenes well, and cutting the music often made it sound disjointed. Despite this, I managed to finalize the project.

For me, this entire project was challenging, and the process from thumbnails to editing was definitely a long one. However, I learned a lot about animation production and the importance of pre-production in storytelling.