First Animatic

I took my storyboard and decided to make an animatic from it. An animatic will help me to see the storyboard moving before making the animation bemuse I can time it and see if it would flow. I did this animatic on Photoshop and rendered on Sony Vegas Pro 10. There are some flow issues with this animatic, but I will be redoing it in Fkash as I can draw into it and change any mistakes I make all in the film. Flash also gives me better control on the timeline.

Storyboard

Once I got my layout and characters, I started doing some storyboards. Storyboards are a good way of showing a visual script of what the characters are doing and saying. Here is my process. 

This storyboard is the teacher and student idea I had. I considered possibly arguing over the thermostat, but since it was uninteresting and an everyday occurrence, I did not continue thinking of this idea anymore. 

With Dialogue

Without Dialogue

The ice and fire idea is where I out most of my effort into because I believed in the project. I considered possible dialogue in my film as it would add t the argument, but I felt like it would add too much, so I tried a non-dialogue storyboard, and the idea ended up being so much better because I could see it as a real back-forward issue, or in this case, an up-down issue. 

When I was happy that was where I wanted to go, I redrew the storyboard with clearer pictures. Now, we can clearly see what the characters are doing, thinking and the facial expressions help in delivering the simple yer effective idea. 

Background Design

My characters need a setting to be in, much like an actor needs a set. When we were set the task of backgrounds and layouts, I tried to think of a setting that would work for my characters. As this involves a thermostat, the best solution would be a living room. This is my process of deciding the final idea of it. 

I took a photo of two chairs separated by a table in one of the lecture rooms and drew a rough idea of my characters in them. This is what I based my background and layout off of. 

I drew a simple living room, and this is what I came up with. I was happy with the simple design, but after presenting this so far, I was suggested to consider tilting the chairs to show more of the characters. 

Here, I took the advice and decided to try it. It did look slightly better so I thought I would keep it. 

I am still thinking of ways to make this design better. I am possibly considering the idea of making two different thrones (one ice throne and one fire throne) to show their contrasting personalities. 

Character Design

As the term started, we were given the task of designing characters to give us a clear idea of the design process from inspiration. The task we were set was to design two characters that can work off each other. Below are my character designs and the reasons behind them. 

1. Teacher and Student

The teacher and student designs were supposed to resemble the idea of two completely different people in a disagreement. I had considered this idea heavily, hence the digital colours added, but I decided that I wanted to stray away from humans characters as there is not very much interest in the idea of human interaction in a cartoon. 

2. Angel and Demon

I decided to explore the idea of polar opposites further by drawing an angel and a demon, drawing from images I found on Google. This didn't have a very big emphasis on design as an angel is very human like, and the demon, although stylized from my vision, could be represented in the form I drew it anyway. Plus, the idea of an angel and demon is very cliche, so I quickly discarded it. 

Angel Wing - Reference to help me draw wings.

Demon of Fire - Reference of image to help me give basic idea of demon.

Taurus Zodiac Sign - Helped me think of bull legs when drawing demon legs.

3. Casual Movie Goer and Real Film Critic

Staying on the subject of human interaction, I remembered two past film critics called Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who has very contrasting opinions on films, and hosted a television show where they argued about films they have watched. This was another possibility that I had considered, but as I explained above, the idea of human conversation animated felt to basic and didn't interest me enough to continue thinking about it, so I put it aside. 

Gene Siskel (Left) and Roger Ebert (Right)

4. Fire Ball and Ice Block

This was my final idea because I felt that there was a range of ideas I could have with these two. When I thought of these characters, I was considering the temperature of the room that time, and it made me think about two people arguing over the temperature and tampering with the thermostat. This helped me draw this idea together, and the idea of it seemed to numerous to me that I decided to keep it.