September 23rd to October 9th - that seems like a long time. Well it has and it hasn't since I posted last. I immediately went to drawing the boards after recording the slug track (rough voices for timing purposes) and had them drawn and enlarged for class last week. I presented the drawings in a quasi-pitch style and couldn't wait to get started on the animatic. I finished the rough animatic yesterday, and promptly brought it into After Effects to give it some movement. Truth be told, a lot of the prep work was done in Photoshop last week.

After scanning the drawings I made layers out of all the elements that were supposed to move. That took about 4 hours total. Then, I had a little difficulty pipeline-wise. I wasn't sure if I should bring the layers into After Effects or Premier first. After I did it in Premier, it was then easier to use the avi file created from that project and use it as a timing guideline for the moving effects shots. That took about four hours. To speed the process I didn't render the After Effects project with the sound and brought it into Premier one final time to render it with the sound. It might have taken just as long, as I think about it, but I also added black to the beginning and end of the animatic to allow it to play better (it reads better with the black leader first because the opening happens so quickly).

I guess that brings us to the heart of the matter. The animation gives the boards a sense of dynamism but some of the timing is wrong. I haven't decided how fast they should be driving (the movement of the buildings in the backgrounds and the actual car in the first and last shots). I also didn't get involved too much with the key poses and as a result we really don't get a feel for the acting yet. I can't say that I'm too worried about these elements because they will get resolved. I want to begin the production designs and the set designs at this point. I have some style frames that I will bring to class in addition to the animatic. I had completed these for another class and the final style frames will incorporate the 3D models. In addition to needing help with the rigging of those models, I will need some help with posting the animatic so everyone can see it on my blog. I will post the storyboards and the style frames in a subsequent post.