Here There be an Animatic

This week was the final push to finish my Tygers animatic! The animatic below is an adaptation from Ray Bradbury’s Here There Be Tygers. It’s not perfect, but I’m excited to see how much growth has occurred over this project.

There is still a lot of room for growth. For one, the main character in the story, Driscoll, looks like a different character in almost every shot. Character consistency is something I will work through in my next storyboard. Starting with finalized characters will be helpful for that. I would have liked to start by nailing the backgrounds first and then moving to character drawings and placements, but I’m trying to avoid the “Waterfall Method” and reach the minimal viable product I could get feedback on. This is a huge change to my workflow, but I’m adjusting.

This week, one technique that helped me was taking reference photos of my little mannequins acting out the shot of Driscoll jumping over the camera. I took a reference video, too to try to understand how the timing would work. My original thumbnails for that shot looked pretty similar, so after trying to re-draw the entire sequence, I ended up just redrawing the thumbnails to match the rest of the project. I also learned how to add gridlines in StoryBoard Pro for this sequence!

For the animatic, I added sound, changed the opening shot, and replaced all the original thumbnails that were still included. As I said, it’s not perfect, but every week has improved by leaps and bounds.

Projects are never done, just due. And with that in mind, it’s time to move on to my next storyboarding project. Wondering what my next move is? I’m working on bringing a story I’ve written to life. I’ll leave a sneak peek below.

A sneek peek into Vermillion, a villain origin story.

Adella is sitting on a bus looking out the window. She looks around at the sparse group of people on the bus with her.

I used to believe that everyone's unique. I would think of them like color patterns and signature waveforms. (Adella narrating)

As the bus drives on, the regular people emit their signature patterns and colors, showing the audience what Adella sees. Adella sketches these brightly colored people in her journal. She pulls various colors of pens out of her backpack to do so. As she digs through her backpack, she lifts up a framed photo of herself and two other people (Marcus and Phoebe)

We all have our own identities and our own paths. It feels like everyone in the world has something recognizable about them.... Except me. That’s why I used to believe that everyone was special…

Adella hurries to put the photo, journal, and pens back into her backpack as the bus stops.

The bus drives off, leaving Adella standing alone at the stop. A tumbleweed rolls by.

“Nowhereville.” The sign next to Adella reads. She looks up at it and sighs to herself.