Telling Tales: Week 2 - Final Look and Storyboard

I'm behind for this weekly production diary as I'm not feeling well at the end of the week. I also felt guilty for not being productive last week, but I had enough rest, and now I feel much better. What I did last week was drawing the final look of the character design. 

On the top left, I still have not decided on which outfit is best for Totsi, and whether her feathers stands up or flops down. In the end, I decided to take the parts that I like the most from those three drawings and keep the feathers flopping down as they are held by her cape. The bottom bit of the sketchbook shows the final design for Totsi. I really like the design, and I kind of realised that she looks like a little chick, so I came up with a backstory which explains how Totsi wears her cape up to her head. Since she is really small, she has a fear of being preyed by huge carnivorous birds, and she thinks that by covering her head with the cape she will look like a miniature teepee and keep her away from the threat. 

Drawing the turnaround will make the modelling process more convenient for Dan as he can look at the design from various angles. The expression sheet are made after I did the storyboard with Dan, such that the expressions drawn are only those that will appear on the actual animation. I would like to spend more time developing Totsi if I have time to do so, but for now I think it is better to move on to develop the overall production design because I want to get it done for the preproduction crit on the 25th.

Totsi's Character Sheet

For our group discussion this week, we finalised our storyboard. Dan has sketched out some of the scenes from the middle towards the end of the story, but he could not think of a strong ending. Since we know the sequence of events that leads to the climax, we use the sticky notes method to draw out some of the scenes that we will definitely include. It speeds up the process of storyboarding as we can draw two scenes at a time, and we can start with the scenes that we are certain of and add more scenes to make a sensible flow of the storyline.

This is how the final storyboard looks like. We came to an agreement that camera movements are to be kept in a minimum as the objective of the animation is for the characters to deliver 'the message' to the audience. Lighting is mostly direct indoor lighting from the hearth at the center of the teepee. For the following week, I will do a further research on how big a teepee actually is as right now the mental image that I have of a teepee is an enormous conical hut which can fit a whole family of the Native American tribes. The animation is a pantomime, in which there is no dialogue between characters, they communicate through exaggerated gestures. We have not discussed about what background sounds that we want to put on, but in my opinion, sound effects will suffice since a melodic piece will distract the audience from the real interaction that is going on in the animation.

Storyboard