planning my film
writing my narrative:
I started planning my film by creating the narrative I want the animation to follow. From my research I knew that the story was very important to engaging an audience, so wanted to make sure I had a good story, I planned the narrative first by making a story mountain with story ideas I gathered from research. Then I wrote those points up in order and tried to fill in the blanks so it would flow.
STORY IDEA NOTES:
MC- main character
Dude- fan character MC likes -they'll both get a real name soon
MC is scrolling on their phone (something that looks like twitter), sees bad news and scrolls past to their ‘comfort’ thing, watches the fancam excitedly and then likes it and turns off the phone, opens the laptop to look at more of this thing. They’re half way through a video they are watching avidly when a big pop up message interrupts. Sign says ‘big bad thing’ MC looks initially annoyed to be interpreted watching their video but then reads the headline, looks intrigued and clicks on it. They read the article and frown at the end and then hurriedly search the internet for more information.Show a montage of them consuming more and more of this info, use lighting to show that time has passed etc. Then they are tiredly looking at their phone on ‘twitter’ again, there's another pop up and then a million more. MC gets annoyed and throws their phone down
They then open the laptop and reach their hand inside, it acts as a sort of’ portal’ to the digital space. The hand inside the computer looks sort of glitchy? They reach all their arm inside, take a breath and close their eyes. Next shot is inside the portal, MC is on their knees with eyes closed. They open to look at the world which looks like -----------------------
They get up and see the dude in the fancam approaching. They sort of flick their hair and the shoujo roses and stars background appears. MC is excited and gets up and the dude closes the middle and produces beanbags and a hair brush from their hand like magic. They smile widely to each other and the next shot shows MC relaxing whilst dude does their hair. MC looks comfortable and leaning back in the chair as their feet rise up and their hand goes up to emphasise their talking. Suddenly there's a buzzing in their pocket, we see MC and dude’s faces look confused. The next shot is their phone buzzing on their bed. MC retrieves phone from pocket and the screen lights up to a notification about the Bad Thing. Whilst they’re looking down, the dude is behind them and goes glitchy, turning into a sort of demon version. The MC looks up again and sees dude who is smirking, sort of evilly. MC looks confused and then dude tugs on their hair, making MC cry out who then leans back and head butts dude who relases them and MC runs off. Next shot is a zoom in of their face which is sweaty and looks relieved to get away, then a long shot showing dude walking up to them. Dude throws MC out of the digital world, and then MC wakes up. We see MC with a bloody and tearry face, panting, their eyes focus and they look at their laptop which is still on an article about the big bad thing. They frown and slam the laptop shut, take their hair down and then get on their bed and look out the window. The sun is setting and MC is bathed in natural light. Last shot is from the outside looking in at MC from the window who smiles.
-Roll credits-
HOW WILL I USE THIS IN MY FILM?
The characters in this description don't have names or appearances yet, the next step is for me to plan out how the characters will look so I can create reference sheets and move on to the storyboards. This narrative will then help me plan out how I want the film to look like and I can then storyboard to plan out how the art will tell this story I created.
designing my characters
I started planning my character designs by thinking about what type of character I wanted them to be, and how they should look to convey that.
moodboards-
I started with making some Pinterest boards for the two characters, to start arranging some thoughts and ideas of what they should look like, then added these ideas to make collages.
MAIN CHARACTER :
To make the main character I wanted to make something relatable to my audience. So, I looked back at my audience persona, which was a younger person on the internet a lot, this made me think that an 'aesthetic TikTok girl' type of character would be a good way of showing that this particular character is on the internet a lot as well. I used the Pinterest board to start gathering ideas about this character like how they dress, look, act etc:
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more 'alternative' style fashion
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layered and baggy outfits
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'grungy' music
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bed room could be cluttered and 'maximalist' with hanging plants and posters.
SIDE CHARACTER:
For the side character, I took inspiration from the idea in my story that the Main character sees them in a fan made 'edit' video. This lead me to look at K-Pop idols since their fans create innumerable amounts of 'fancams'. I also looked into the retro computer aesthetic of what I think the digital world could look like and demons and hell for the 'corrupted' form of this character, and found the following quite inspirational:
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Windows 3 UI but in pastel colours
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Kpop idols
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'Glitchcore' aesthetic
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'attractive' young men
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clash of soft pastel colours and bright and dark colours
concept sketches-
I then started sketching how I wanted the characters to look like , expanding on my ideas and experimenting with art styles.
Drawing these quick and messy sketches was a good way to develop and test out different ideas for these characters. I started with the protagonist, and drew reference to the baggy and layered clothes look from the mood boards. The secondary character has a sharper jawline and large 'wingding eyes'. I found this to be a good way of getting a better grasp on the ideas I had for these designs.
making turnarounds
I started making my turnarounds by drawing the character's basic body shapes in the different angles and then added details like the hair and clothes. I then finished them digitally, using the transform tools to adjust the anatomy and make sure they all lined up correctly. I coloured the front facing drawings so I had a good colour reference and finished the sheets by adding colour palettes, character doodles and some basic information on them.
the character designs
This character's design was mostly inspired by the fashion style I added to my mood board to reflect the 'TikTok girl' idea. Her outfit consists of a baggy t-shirt with a yellow smiley face, a reference to the Nirvana band t-shirt, this reflects the character's interests and alludes to her more 'alt' style. Her outfit generally is inspired by the clothing trends popular on the internet that I found on the mood board. She wears a skirt instead of trousers which I had originally planned but changed so she has a different silhouette compared to Apollo. The earrings add a bit more of a punky look which reflects her attitude. The hair is shoulder length with a fringe, the colour is a light purple lavender colour which symbolises femininity and youth, contrasting the more male associated blue of Apollo's colour scheme. This helps contrast the characters more as the light unnatural colour opposes the dark black of the other character, showing the difference in ages of the two. This helps alienate Audrey from the star she is a fan of.
The freckles and hair clips add a touch of cuteness.
This character's design was mostly inspired by the mood board I made. He's made up of very square and boxy shapes. I wanted this to contrast the softer more round shapes of the main character. The clothes and colour scheme are inspired by the looks of the K-Pop idols I added to my mood board, the longer hair and almond eye shape soften the more heavy masculine body geometry and serve to make the character more sweet looking. His eyes are influenced by anime eyes, with big catchlights and can twinkle and have shapes instead of pupils to help show what he's emoting. The hair curls inwards, adding some symmetry to the design, I also added some strands of hair on his face to frame it and add a more androgynous appearance. This too was inspired by the looks of the K-pop idols on my mood board, who had more 'pretty' features and wore lots of trendy clothing in pastel colours. This fits the character idea as he is supposed to be a musician and his design needs to reflect the fact he is a young and popular figure.
evaluating my designs/turnarounds
I am mostly pleased with how the character's designs came out, I like how the characters contrast each other in terms of shapes and sizes but also complement each other with the pastel colours and layered outfits. I particularly liked how their clothes and appearances reflect different types of people on the internet; Audrey is a social media-obsessed teen whose clothes' reflect the interests of more niche subcultures found there, Apollo's look mirrors young musicians and artists popular on the internet. I wanted the character designs to help signal to the viewer something about their personality/ role in the story. By using commonly known types of people to reflect designs from, the audience can easily understand what type of character they are. I like reflecting the idea of internet personalities in these characters because it links my character designs to the film's themes of media and the internet. I generally think the turnaround sheets look good, I like how they're laid out, especially the character doodles at the bottom which were a good chance to get used to drawing them a bit more. I also enjoy the colour palettes especially Audrey's which I liked the look of together, predominately the turquoise in the eyes which adds a nice contrasting cool hue to the design. I'm still unsure about the face shapes of them, Audrey's face is pointy but in my concepts, it's more rounded. This could add more contrast to Apollo's boxy jawline but could soften the character's appearance and downplay her moody look. I was unsure about the secondary character's jawline which has more dimension than the protagonist's. I wasn't concerned with how it looked but how it might add some extra complication to being animated. Overall, I like how the character's look and think their designs help compliment their story purpose but have been unsure along the way on some of the particular design details.
character bios
I thought it would be a good idea the develop the personalities and context for these characters before starting to animate. I thought that knowing a bit more about how the characters act and feel will inform their movements, postures and facial expressions in the animation which I can use to show more about the character's personalities. From my audience research, I know that creating interesting characters is important to keep a viewer engaged in my film and more likely to draw in and understand the message. With this in mind, I thought it would be ideal to get a better grasp of the characters and write a bit about them.
Making these character biographies allowed me to become more familiar with these characters and think about them in more depth, considering things like their motivations and place in the story. Knowing a little more about their demeanour and personalities will help me portray more characterisation through the animation. For example, I can show Audrey as anxious by making her move slowly and sluggishly. Overall this was a good way of developing my characters and generating ideas for how they will move/act.
shot list
I thought that it would be a good idea to create a shot list, so that when I made my story board I could have something to refer back to and plan out what shots I wanted to use and how I wanted them to look prior to making them. I created a table in Google docs and I added a section of the narrative text to a table where I elaborated how I wanted the shot for that to look like. I also included what parts would be moving and what and what background I would need to use. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way for the shots to portray what was happening. I thought back to The shot by shot analysis that I did for secondary research and remembered that using a range of shot types was very important to show different ideas like how close-ups help show the characters feelings, so I used close-ups of the main character’s face to show her reaction to everything. I found it hard to come up with the layout of the shots, so I used a pen and paper to doodle ideas used posing mannequins to make character poses.
EVALUATING MY SHOT LIST:
Overall I think my shot list went well because I was able to create a detailed guide to what shots I would like to use in my animation and I think that this will really help me when I am creating the storyboards because I can easily refer to the list for what I need to draw. However, this task took me longer than expected and I did not plan the second half of the narrative. I thought a good stopping point would be the opening to the digital world scene, as this is where I’ve planned to animate up to and then possibly more given enough time. I would have preferred to roughly plan out the rest of the boards for the whole narrative but I think that it is wise to spend less time on this so I can move on to production as quickly as possible. If I need to animate past this moment I can always create an extended shot list for these scenes.
storyboarding
I started boarding my animation in Storyboarder, I made rough sketches with the pencil tool to create an idea of what the shot will look like. I'm not too bothered with perfecting these boards and making them too detailed, as long as it can convey what I want the shot to look like, this will be very useful to me. Looking back at my primary research and the questions I asked about the animation process, I know that storyboarding is very important in keeping the timing correct. So my main goal is to get an idea of how long each shot will take, the artistic quality of the boards isn't so important, just as long as they convey the looks of the shot.
I found it difficult to think of how some of the shots would look like, I wasn't sure what would be in the scene at a certain angle or how the character looked in it. This made me decide that I needed some sort of reference that I could get shots of different angles from. I made a room in The Sims game and used the camera to get some screenshots at different angles and then took a picture on my phone and added in a figure. This worked really well and sped up the time it took to draw some shots that I found tricky to draw.
Halfway through my boards, I found the process easier as I went along and became more accustomed to Storyboarder and using a drawing tablet.
I enjoyed boarding this section because I was able to focus a little more on facial expressions and characterisation. It felt really satisfying to be able to 'watch' the characters start to come to life, even in animatic form.
I finished making my storyboards by drawing the last few boards and adjusting their timings to help them flow better. I used the stopwatch on my phone to time how long some actions would take and made them longer or shorter depending on this. This part was quite tricky as I needed the actions to take enough time so that the animation is realistic and making sure I emphasise key moments by making them longer. For example, the face close-ups are longer than their predecessors so the audience understands the character's emotions better.
My favourite shots are the ones of Audrey in the dark on her bed looking on her phone. I tried using Storyboarder's pastel tool to add some lighting and shading to help show the gloomy 'vibe' in these drawings. The changes in lighting are supposed to show how she is consuming a lot of this media over a longer period of time whilst confining herself to her room. This harkens inspiration from my secondary research on 'doom scrolling' and its effects on mental health which showed me that absorbing so much negative media is really harmful to our mental health and I tried to show that a little here. By using tired facial expressions and being in a dark bedroom, it shows that Audrey is not in a good place mentally here.
I found drawing the backgrounds to be more difficult than the characters but it was very satisfying to be able to map out the space in which they inhabit. I referenced the room in the Sims game a few times to get different angles of the furniture which came in very useful with the shots of the desk and the longshot positioned at the back of the room I also found it fun to design the space a little in the rough layouts, like imagining some posters and plants in the room I want the look of these backgrounds to reflect the personality of the characters. So adding some posters with references to music and bands could be a good way of showing that Audrey is a young girl. This is something I am looking forward to doing with the backgrounds.
Overall, I found making the storyboards to be a really satisfying process. Seeing everything start to come together was very rewarding and was a good way to check if it flowed nicely. It also allowed me to generate new ideas like using the windows and notifications on Audrey's devices, to communicate ideas. This happens in the scene where Audrey has her arm in the laptop 'portal' window and a notification asks what she is doing. This is meant to show that Audrey is making poor choices in her unhealthy habits with media and technology. This self-aware messaging to the audience is inspired a little by Bertolt Brecht's techniques of 'Epic Theatre' that I studied for Drama GCSE. The 'Verfremdungseffekt' or alienation effect is supposed to remind the audience they are watching a piece of theatre, not real life. The purpose of this is the help them see their world as it is. I thought this might be useful when considering my original intent of wanting to create a narrative film to encourage healthy habits. This is also seen at the end where there are notifications in the sky of the portal space, which I plan to show different 'choices' like buttons with a question asking them to make a decision. This could be a good way of adding the happy sort of ending I had originally planned for.
In summary, I found making the storyboards to be a satisfying process, I liked drawing the facial expressions and poses but had more trouble with the backgrounds and the timing which I'm still not sure I'm 100% certain about. However, my animatic did serve the purpose of compiling all the shots I want together and give a rough idea of what the animation will look like.