Story Project One

For this project, I was tasked with going through the standard process of creating a small animated short film, from the initial character design phase all the way up to a full animatic. We were given the rule of having our characters be living inanimate objects. No human characters were allowed. Given this rule, I decided to make my world fully consist of living shapes. My story was called Lost Love. A heart who terrorizes others with his love of pranks finally realizes that his interests can have devastating outcomes. After a small child is hurt from one of his pranks, he has to face a very difficult decision that could change him forever.

Animatic:



Overall, creating the animatic was probably one of the easier things to do for this project. All I had to do was simply throw all of the storyboard shots in Premiere and line them up with their timings, which ended up working out very nicely. The one main issue I had was getting sound effects. I went to one website and set up an account, only for it to have a download limit of 3. I went to a second website which required an account and other licensing things. Then I finally went to a third website that didn't have too many sound effects that I was looking for, so I eventually just had to make do. However, other than that, the animatic wasn't too difficult.

Storyboard:


The storyboard was probably one of the more difficult sections of this project for me, and the one that took the most amount of time. I'm not the best at drawing or perspective, and some of the shots I had in mind really challenged those aspects for me. Also, there are so many things that go into storyboards including camera movements, character movements, character actions, etc. which did tend to overwhelm me while doing this portion, which is why there is a bit of a lack of those different aspects within my storyboard. If I could improve on it I would, but I'm not sure if I'm fully cut out for it.

Beat Board:

Similar to the storyboard, I had a bit of trouble during the beat board process just because I'm not really too great at perspective and other such things. However, I did feel like I did a bit better on this and took less time to complete it simply because it didn't require all of the other technical aspects that storyboards need. It was a bit of a challenge to figure out what to draw for the big plot points based off of the beat sheet, but it ended up not being too bad once I got startedd.

Character Construction and Models:

I think doing the designs and models for the main character was the most enjoyable part of this assignment for me. I originally got the idea for the character from a little drawing game my friends and I played while in art class that had us designing bosses for a video game that had a "cute" look to them. I partly based this design off of that, and I was very happy with it. I like the idea of a living HEART being so evil looking, despite what we normally associate a heart with. It was a little difficult keeping proportions correct, especially when drawing him in different poses, but overall, I was pretty happy with the turnout.

Script:

The script wasn't actually too bad to do honestly. Once I had my beat sheet and beat board done, the story slowly, but surely creeped its way out, and ended up being pretty straightforward. For my story I wanted it to have no dialogue just to add to the whole "show, don't tell" idea and I'm not the best at creating compelling dialogue. This script did also challenge me though because it made me think harder about what the actions and movements of the characters should be and how they are beneficial or useful for the plot.

Loglines, Plot Summary, and Beat Sheet:

Unlike the script, the beat sheet was a little more tricky. It was a bit difficult for me to figure out 5 different key points within a 1 minute short film. However, once I got a logline in, which took some hard thinking, it started to slowly come to me. It was difficult figuring out the 5 key points since I felt they needed to have a big enough impact to be placed within those different areas, which made coming up with what to say a bit of a challenge. Once the 5 beat sheet points and the logline were done, the plot summary was a piece of cake.

Overall:

Despite the many trials and challenges I had to tread through to get through this assignment, I feel it turned out decently well. Things like the storyboard and beat boards were challenging because I'm not very good at perspective and drawing in general, but I managed to push through and deliver a good enough product. It would be interesting to revisit this story again and see how I could improve it in the future because I do like the concept that I went with, but I do feel like it could use a little bit more work before it can really shine.