Animatic

The next stage of the pipeline was the animatic. this would give me the timing of my finished animation and would be used as a guide for the rest of my team to follow so I wouldn't have to be in constant communication with them. Normally the storyboard could be taken and then literally put in order and then have a certain amount of time dedicated to each frame and that would be your animatic. I decided that although my storyboard was fine, there was a lot i needed to refine so that it would translate more to the finished piece for example the first shot was going to be done as one long continuous pan so therefore having the frames of the storyboard which didn't do that wouldn't be as helpful to me or my team so i decided to completely redraw all the frames to the necessary formats. I used photoshop to draw the new materials and then imported those into after effects to add movement and flow.

This is the full frame redrawn layout for Shot 1. This actually turned out to be the most ambitious and most problematic shot to do simply because of its size. Having never done anything of this size before it was like diving blind into something I had no idea how to do.  I drew all the lines in photoshop and then blocked in a white fill so everything was clear and not the messy jumble that leaving it as transparent line work would have given. This was important on a shot of this size with so much detail. Whilst blocking in the white fill I changed the background colour to a random colour so I had a contrast between the white background and the white of the fill. It was when I had finished the white fill when I stepped back and saw that I really liked the look of this white line work against such a bold, block colour. I had found my colouring method. I decided to use these block colour backgrounds behind the white line art to give my animation a unique look and style and also a handy way to reduce the work load on colouring.

top: the full frame of shot 1 that would be panned across bottom: the print bot and print booth he sits in from the shot

This is the animatic layout for Shot 2. In keeping with my newly decided colour scheme I took a block colour as my background. I didn't take too much care picking complimentary colours at this point because I knew that would come at a later date when I wanted to tie the animation together. Shown below is also my method of getting ti to move. Instead of going through the lengthy process of doing full rough movements (seeing as I had already planned those key frame poses extensively in the design stage) I redrew the main key frame poses all on this scene as shown below in photoshop and then in after effects I revealed just one, then hid it and revealed the next pose to give the sense of movement. This gave me the directions and proportions of the movement within the scene and also gave me the timing as I timed it to how long the movement would take. I would use this information a lot when it came to roughing my final animation. It was this shot where I also took the opportunity to add some movement into the background as I wanted quite a nice level of detail in all areas of the animation including the background so I drew a flock of bird bots which would flock out of the dead tree trunk. Little touches like this would give my animation quite a nice depth.

top left: the three main key frame poses in Shot 2 bottom left: my redrawn background bottom right: a section of the background for shot 2 which contains the movement of the flock of bird bots

 For one of the shots I had planned out and realised a sequence of three upgrade shots where Chip received a number of upgrades from the arms of the NSS machine. Once the first draft of my animatic had been completed it was clear it was far too long. I then decided these three separate shots which took up almost a minute of time could be condensed into one shot split up into three sections all playing at the same time. On pitching this idea to my team they agreed but it was brought to my attention that the shot of him being painted looked more like he was being sprayed with perfume so I went back to my sketchbook and drew these key poses for a battery replacement instead which was more robotic and gave me more of a chance to play around with movement and expressions of chip and therefore made it a better shot. These would be put into after effects in the same way as the others and timed out.

key frame poses of Chip getting his batteries changed

 This is Shot 3 and for this shot I had decided I wanted a P.O.V shot form Chips perspective of him seeing the NSS machine just to give the animation a change in view and break up the backgrounds a bit and also speed up the pacing which was slightly lacking at the beginning of the first draft of animatic. Doing this also meant there wasn't much to animate so it was an easy shot. I didn't want the shot to become boring hoever so I drew a robot whale creature and asked my other animator to add it into the shot making it rise or jump out of the water just to add more movement into a fairly static shot. It was also redrawing this shot where I came up with the design for the NSS machine. I wanted something that would stick out and look new and modern against the industrial and broken down backgrounds so I gave it more curves and lots of sticky-out flashy details to give a sense of this brand new, flashier alternative to survey machines.

top left: the full composited shot bottom left: the shot without the POV screen over it bottom right: my design for the NSS machine

In these shots I wanted to give the impression of intimidation and caution Chip would feel towards this newcomer and also a sense of power and domination over the old method of surveying which is represented by the uncaring, run down print bot of the first shot. Where we look down on that method we look up at this one. Both of these shot were fairly simple with Chip moving firstly towards and then away form the machine as it began to upgrade him etc so to add a bit more excitement to these I added a camera move that played with the already forced perspective of the machine and made for a much more interesting shot.

top left: the shot of chip about to get his upgrade bottom left: chip intimidated about to use the machine left: extended chip

 If you look at my original animatic and this page of the same shot it is clear to see that it has been drastically changed. The problem with my original draft of shot 5 was that it was far too long, lingering on a static shot that got boring no matter how many flashy screen effects etc we added. Therefore I went back to my sketchbook and came up with this idea of a turnaround shot where the camera does just over 180 degrees from over to chips shoulder to facing chip and we see the survey being completed inside chips head screen. this was much more interesting but it also called for a lot more animation and planning so I had to redraw some key poses for the movement and also multiple angles of chip to show the turnaround which can be seen here. I would also have to work closely with my background artist to get the background right on this.

top left: final key poses of the turnaround top right: beginning key poses of turnaround bottom: key poses before turnaround

 These are closeup shots for Chip being upgraded. As I mentioned before, these individual shots were eventually refined into one single shot for times sake and also set them apart from the other shots and made for quite a nice, entertaining montage shot. most of the animation would be done on after effects anyway for that smooth mechanical feel that's difficult to achieve with Flash so i took care to get these done to the highest standard.

top left: chainsaw upgrade top right: getting an extra finger bottom: battery changing

 This was the final shot of the animation and because of the quality of the storyboard I had drawn previously I used the key poses I had already drawn and the background simply for ease. It was then a matter of timing it out to give the smug walk I wanted Chip to have, proudly displaying his new upgrades to the generic bots who abandon the old survey to take the NSS.

top: the composited shot bottom: my makeshift, temporary NSS logo that appears throughout

Now I had the animatic complete  I was now at a stage to begin the finished animation. I gave a copy of this to my entire team to work from and set about delegating shots and backgrounds to the individuals and began work on my own shots. I took the role of an animator on this project as I felt I had the emotion and feel of the movements in my own head being the creator and felt I could better portray those than some of my team mates. I got another of my team to act as an animator also as there was a lot of animating to be done and then split the other two between backgrounds.