Documentary in the Rough
Once the interviews were done, Cameron began storyboarding them. I then took these storyboards and compiled them together into a static slideshow to help with timing. Then I took some of Damo's character designs and animated the roughs into the animatic. Since this was a character-animation-intensive documentary, reference footage was essential. Cameron and I shot embarassing, yet useful reference footage to help with the roughs.
Since I like spreadsheets so much I began to do the work of a producer too, organising and listing things that needed to be done in Google sheets. I may have gone overboard and cause panic among my team because of how detailed they were, so I toned it down and reduced it to simple check boxes.
What went well:
- Animating the roughs meant I could figure out the limits of the character designs, i.e. head angles that'd be impossible or would run the risk of becoming a Simpsons/Peppa pig forward facing monstrocity. I gave and receieved feedback to Damo so the character design process was fluid and effective,
- The key and extreme poses really helped sell the performance, and helped with the timing too,
- The reference footage, as usual, proved invaluable to the perfomance.
What could be improved:
- The line between animatic and rough animation was quite blurry in this project, although I feel I could've kept it less detailed to allow for the animators to have more freedom.
- Keeping checklists and gantt charts simple is key to a perfectly organised project, I need to make sure my team is on the same page.
No comments:
Post a Comment