Hi all, our storyboards for the IDI project are now submitted so I guess were committed to these animations now. I'm going to upload a few of the images from my storyboard just to give ye an idea of where I'm going with it.

 

Opening shot of the caveman heading home after a hard day at the office

 

 

The distant caves indicate how far he still has to travel

 

 

A chance encounter with a craftsman (designer) gives him an idea

 

 

The animation is about a caveman and his journey back to his cave one day. It was good for me to add colour to the line drawings I was going to submit, as I learned how to create colour swatches. These were important for keeping consistency between different images, something that was a problem during previous projects. The facility to name these swatches is also helpful as you can name which object each colour applies to.

So now its time to research the production itself. I need to check out history and geography books for suitable landscapes that might be similar to my requirements. I'm also going to watch some movies that are set in prehistoric times, including some animated ones. I seem to remember 'The Croods' having very authentic looking backgrounds. One of my childhood favourites was 'The Flintstones', and the landscapes used for that series might be more suitable as I'm keeping my animation flat, as in 2D. 

I am also going to research for the audio track, i.e. record the obvious sounds I need and set them to a timeline. This will give me an idea of any silences which might occur and consequently a need for background music or ambient sound.

I also planned to do a real-time walk through, which I should have done before I submitted the storyboard. The reason I should have done it first is that I did it today, and discovered that I really need about seventeen seconds to get the correct pace. This meant that I've had to trim all the scenes shorter, which does take from the overall effect. To get a more accurate summery of the timeline I made a stick figure animatic in Adobe Flash. Unfortunately it doesn't have the pace I was going for originally, as it's now squeezed into twelve seconds, but if I play with the timing a bit it might turn out o.k.

I've saved my animatic to QuickTime so I can post it and hopefully get some feedback regarding the pace.