Pre-Production - First Animatic

The pre production began with creating the first draft of the animatic. Since this was a first draft, it was more of a moving storyboard than a full on animatic, therefore I took the key scenes shown in the storyboard, and simply animated them a little, to give myself and the viewer a sense of what the scenes and movements would be like. I created the scenes on photoshop, and then put it together on movie maker, as Flash had expired on my laptop, and it was becoming an increasing difficult to get it corrected and still have enough time to create it, and so I begrudgingly accepted the fact I needed to use something already on my laptop, working correctly, to get the 1^st draft done by the next week. I wasn't too annoyed by the massive downgrade in quality and software as this first draft was only to get a feel of making my storyboard move, learning the benefits and uses for animatics in pre production. I also began creating the draft with the knowledge that no matter how the animatic would turn out, I would redo it on Flash once it was up and running, using the information and feedback I would receive from this first version.

With flash being down, and using photoshop and movie maker, I had to make each frame my self, and with the short amount of time, found the quality of the images were low, and the movements very sudden and difficult to follow. But the biggest problem with the first draft is the lack of timing. The timing in the animatic is not how I envision the final animation to be, and so it wasn’t very practical to work from. The animatic did not have any sound either, or very detailed characters, which the viewers found confusing to follow, as the transition from the crowds individuals faces into the kitchener’s face isn’t very obvious on the characters, aside from the presence of a very crude moustache, which is obvious to me, but not to others. But now that I have created my first ever animatic, I have a clearer idea of what not to do, and what they need to have.