For my final project I have done a storyboard animatic, which is a rough cut of animations. I choose this project because I like to tell stories, its my passion. And with project I have decided to base it upon my own life! Well kind of…just the things that happened to me for the last couple of months. Everything you see in this short has happened to me since coming to Toronto, unfortunately….

The Premise:

The premise basically revolves around a day in the life of a unfortunate unlucky soul, well me…. and the humorous misfortune that happens to me. The whole video is done without dialogues, the way I see I, is your making a 3 mins videos there’s no point in having dialogues, dialogues create information and background about characters, and with a short like this its really unnecessary. A good storyteller knows that, not that I call myself a good storyteller…. I kind of suck actually. But i liked how this project turned out!

The Process:

I first draw up backgrounds for each scene in my sketchbook, which totaled roughly around 36 scenes. Then draw the animation on post-it notes, I do it on post-it notes because the material on them can been seen through, this way I can make sure I’m animating over the backgrounds and previous animation cel properly, they act as a sort of flip-book if you will. Then scan them into Photoshop where I would clean them up and prep them for editing in Adobe Premier. I much prefer Adobe Premier over Final Cut for the sole reason of having the feature of editing your Photoshop work and premier would be directly correspond to whatever you do in Photoshop, a very handy tool especially if you’re doing traditional animation.

– Draw backgrounds onto sketchbook

– Draw the animation on Post-It notes over the backgrounds

– scan them then clean and crop them for editing

– then finally edit and animate them in Adobe Premier!

Challenges:

The biggest Challenge i had with this project was definitely the time constraint, i realized that this would be time consuming, but i definitely underestimated the time it takes to do up the animation. I had to cut a lot of scenes out. There was actually one scene in which I’m late for my time based media class and as I arrive Kate Hartman gives me a hard time and gets very angry. But that scene would’ve taken too long to edit; the whole process took me around 30 pages of my sketchbook, and 60 animation cels. And right now I realize that I really should put sound effects and some sound in it, I think ill edit that some time in the future. But in the end it’s all worth it eh?

“According to my LUCK”

So for my final project i propose i will do a animatic. Similar to the animatic i made “Garbage Day” i posted up on the OCAD website.

In animation and special effects work, the storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called “animatics” to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. At its simplest, an animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence. (as qouted by wikipedia)

I want it to be around 3 minutes, the it will be called “According to my Luck”. The basic premise is basically me in the morning getting up for class and how unfortunate things happen to me on the way. Mind you i will be putting up everything that actually happened to me in real life and incorporate that into this, things like stuck in a elevator, stepping on dog crap, dropping my toothbrush into the toilet, etc. i think it will be amusing to incorporate this into my video. I will draw backgrounds that characters will move in onto the sketchbook, then with elements that move within the scene in will draw on a post it note so it will be easier to animate them from scene to scene, this is how i did my other animatics, a trick i learned at the other college i went to.

TIME LINE:

-November 24, Tuesday: Have half of the backgrounds done

-November 26, Thursday: start animating

-December 1, Tuesday: import drawings into adobe premier and start editing, look for audio and record sound.

-December 3, Thursday: present the project

So basically i made a kind of a campy horror movie. Unfortunately it ran a little long, around three minutes i hope that’s okay….its hard to build suspense in horror if you rush through things…i cut a lot of scenes out already. I shot this movie in the span of 2 hours and did the voice for the monster myself using a microphone i bought from futureshop (which ill be returning, cause fuck microphones are expensive, it was like 40 dollars!) I’m not a professional voice actor so you’ll have to bare with me. If you’ve seen any of the new batman movies, its basically me doing batman’s voice.

The premise is me late at night working hard and im being tormented by a monster who’s being a huge prick and steals my artwork. Its obviously not suppose to be too serious, if anyone has watched any of the Sam Raimi movies like evil dead seires or drag me to hell, then you’ll know what I’m going for. Heres a like to me movie, enjoy! And happy Halloween!

Movie right here! Look excited!

For my video I plan to do a campy scary short movie maybe around 2-3 mins long, just in time for Halloween 🙂 The premise takes place around OCAD and I’m late at school doing my homework and I’m being tormented by a monster known as “The OCAD Monster”. And throughout the movie he tries to steal my homework, he’s quite the evil spirit.

I’ve always been a fan of Sam Raimi and his campy movies, Evil Dead series and his recent movie Drag Me to Hell. I will in corporate many elements into this, sound is definitly important in a horror movie, I will use audio effectively to create suspense. I plan to edit this on my own laptop using Adobe Premier CS3. Because frankly i just can’t stand MACs.

Overall this has been very useful assignment for me, it was deffinitly useful to know how to embed videos on your website because I’ve been trying to do that for the longest time for my own website, which is www.Artsy-Doodle.com if anyone is interested, please be interested….

It was also incredibly useful to know how to apply CSS and html code for websites because I’ve always relied on Dreamweaver to write codes for me, for I’m one lazy dude. You can check my ocad webspace at here http://webspace.ocad.ca/~lc09vr , it’s amazing.