Storyboards: Space Cat, and Black Hole Dog
Empathy
In this project, I was challenged with something that I was a little more familiar with, and that is a storyboard project. Thankfully it was something that I was familiar with, so it did not seem hard to really begin with. However, it needed to be an animatic, which was a project that revolved around music and images to convey a story. I had done similar projects in the past, but never something as complex as this. Another problem for me was telling a story in a short time period, which in this case, was a mere minute. Having a team was also an interesting addition, but it was a situation that needed to be adapted to.
Define
The problem that we needed to solve was telling a story in a very short time period, having good art to support it, having a valid soundtrack and sounds, and overall, having enough polish to make the assignment look nice. As for the problem with the team was finding the people who were best at certain things needed for the assignment.
Ideate
The Ideate Stage was interesting, because everyone presented their story ideas in an interesting fashion. I myself presented a story idea, which was a short story about a socially awkward man named Tim Jinkles. I wanted the villain of his story to be society in general, but I made this idea before I found out the time limit, so my idea was obsolete at that point.
There were other ideas presented as well, but in the end, we all decided on a single script Idea that felt the most appropriate for this assignment.
Space Pets, by our Group Member Oscar, seemed like the best idea. It was the adorable tale of two animals from space fighting over the attention of an old man. The idea seemed innocent enough, and it looked very good when we discussed it more.
We decided that it was the best idea to go with, and immediately I showed the group my work, which Allowed me to become the honorary story boarder.
Here is my original Concept for the Storyboards.
Prototype
After the concepts, we all went our separate ways, and being assigned to the storyboards made it easy for me to focus on the task at hand, which was refining the art of the concept.
Then I let go of my storyboards, leaving the other members of the group to work their magic on the project. The result came out better than I expected!
Feedback
However, in the end, the feedback was a little relentless. Although our professor liked the project, the class seemed a little indifferent. I noticed that their initial reactions were not very positive. They pointed out a lot of our flaws, including the fact that our production lacked music. I felt a little down about it, but we fixed some of the sound afterwards, and thankfully, all went well in the end.
I learned a thing or two about this project. First off, that animatics are a bit difficult if one is assigned a single role. Being the story boarder, I had hoped that the result could have been better, but after hearing the feedback, I had seen the downsides of it. Overall though, it was a good project, and I had a lot of fun doing it.