The Storyboard Animatic Project of Learning pt.24

           The Storyboard Animatic Project of Learning is finally completed!!!   I barely finished it  before the 2 year mark but I have still finished it.  Now all that is left is to mail it out.  Watch it below.

The Crititque

         - A lot of the shots come across as well done and planned.  They work.

         - The overall idea for the project is successful.  It definitely comes across as a good mix of Legend of Korra and Gangam Style.

         -  Characters are readable and everything comes across like it should.

         - The drawings near the end are better than I thought they would.

         - The project took A LOT longer then it should have.

         - The boards are very messy and smudged.  This really hurts how professional the project appears.

            *Storing these boards in a box was a HORRIBLE idea.  I had access to a scanner and I should have scanned them right away!  What was I thinking!

        - There are a lot of drawing errors as well.

        - The final bit dance seen comes across as rushed because I didn't animate the background to go along with the figures moving.

         - The project definitely comes across as more amateurish than something done by a professional that knows what he is doing.

         - I GODDAMN FUCKING FINISHED THE BLOODY THING!!!!  Despite moving three times, struggling to afford to eat, spending a quarter to finish my degree,  living with an Aunt and Uncle that I eventually had to hide drawing from, and at one point having 32 hour work days,  I somehow managed to finish the damn thing and get it posted up on the internet!  That is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing out of all of it.  Especially, given the difficulties that I was mentioning above.

          -  Now I really don't have an excuse for some of the projects I have been thinking about. If I was able to finish this one, I can finish other projects.

The Storyboard Animatic Project of Learning pt.23

I  am finally on the last leg of getting the animatic finished.  However I am no longer at SCAD, and only have access to my computer.

   No more beautiful two computer workspaces.

         Somehow,  either through a deal SCAD that lasts longer than when I finished, or by sown miracle of GOD,  I am able to use After Effects for free.  Since I don't have a computer just for visual reference, I have devised a way to use the snippet tool to create my reference images.

            I used these images that I took from key moments that I want to animate and used them as the points of reference.

       This is basically how I was doing things with two computers only not as specific. That is just a price I am going to have to pay however, if I want to keep this project under the 2 year mark.

The Storyboard Animatic Project of Learning pt.22

            I am at the point where I am drawing this scene.

             To do this scene properly and like I planned I need to have a specific character referenced for each person in the scene.  Not necessarily easy, but I believe it will be that much better.  So I created a diagram in Photoshop to help me keep track and know what I am doing.

The names are also the titles of the images used for reference to make things easier

            Originally I thought there were 2 people in the first row but upon further inspection I realized that there were more like two rows of 2 people.  This means thatI will have to find more characters.
(Show image with shadows circled.).  I also need to make sure I draw this small.  While doing the After Effects work earlier, I realized that I was making things too big and I was starting to have trouble fitting them into the frames.  So it is a good thing I did that, or I would have a lot more errors to correct later on in the project.

The I Don't Have Time For This Pro Bono Project pt.1

      So a opportunity arose a little while ago, and someone I met gave me the opportunity to do some pro bono storyboarding.  It was for a friends music video that he was producing.  I, of course, agreed to do it.  Now of course comes the fun part.

       I had 2 weeks to do it!  Also I have been working two full-time jobs and was in the middle of getting a lot of After Effects work done for the Gangam Style Project.  So, of course, Gangam Style was put on hold and I agreed to do it.  I made sure to talk about my difficulties with the deadline and he was fine with it.  He had never used storyboards and wanted to see what it would be like.

    To start off with, I typed up some notes based on our conversation about the project and started to look for reference.

       This really just became an excuse for me to feed my old addiction of watching sad korean music videos.
   

        Since I had such very little time to work on this project I did it digitally and boy am I glad that I did.  I hadn't drawn digitally in over a year.  I had a break in between my two shifts and did some quick sketches to refresh on how to draw digitally.

     Yeah these aren't pretty, but they helped me remember my process for drawing digitally.  Also I sketched out some of what I was thinking of as possible shot calls, since I had not gotten the script yet.

The Storyboard Animatic Project of Learning pt.20

        In a month I am moving away from SCAD and up north to Maryland.  No there is an important part to this, and that being that the access to the materials I need is going to change.  For instance there will be no more free usage of After Effects, and I will have to pay Adobe a monthly rate to use it.   Also. I won't have the ability to use 2 computers like I did before.

       This is very important because, for this video, I am doing exact reference of the camera pans, scene changes, and so on.  However, After Effects can only allow you to work on one video at a time so I can't simply open up the Gangam Style video for reference.  When I move to Maryland, I will have to open up the video in After Effects, write the information I need, close it down, the open up the animatic video.  I won't go into how much slower things will be.  So while talking about how I should get as much out of the SCAD equipment that I can, I decide to try something risky and see if it works or not.

        I am basically going to try and put together as much of the video as possible with the images I have done already.  The concept behind this is that I can get as much of the After Effects work done now so that there be as little as possible to do when I move and the process slows down.  None of the images have been cleaned up or corrected yet.  Hopefully, in theory, I can just re scan the images, rename them, and the program will simply replace the originals and I won't have to start over.

       Hopefully.
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The Storyboard Animatic Project of Learning pt.19

So I have found myself using blue line a lot more these days.  Like, alot, alot more.

         It started while I was working on this image.  The image was getting overly messy, and parts of the paper were ripping.

      I tried it with the light box and I was very unhappy with it.  It was coming out messier, the facial recognition was off, etc.  So I printed the original image in blue line instead.  Obviously blue line worked better.

     Since then I have been using it a lot.  Like, fuck dealing with a light board, I am just going to print blue line instead.

      Some of the reasons could be that i make more money now, so a $20 dollar ink cartridge is not as stressfull.  However I am still very poor so it  has been somethign I dread having to buy.  Another reason could be that I am jsut getting fed up with this project taking so long.  Blue Line is quicker and better than lightboarding in my opinion, so I am at the point where I will suck it up financially and just print it out.   Also there is the fact I am beginning to see that this project could actually be finished, and I am eager to reach that point,  so it is even more frustrating to have things slowed down making it take even longer to reach the finish line.

The Storyboard Animatic of Learning pt. 18

         I was going to make a post about how I have started using blue line, but OH MY GOD, I JUST FIGURED OUT HOW TO GET A SHIT TON OF REFERENCES!!!!  (Actually I finished making this post weeks after, but I am sure you get the point.)

      See I am back in the SCAD labs at the moment and working with Premiere Pro CS6.  The really frustrating thing is that I have never been able to figure out how to get print off an image of the frame that I am looking at.  CS2 has this lovely capture feature which works great for my needs.   Instead I had been using the VLC snapshot function instead which is sadly not as accurate as I would like.

        So I was playing around with CS6 and was looking at the Export Function.  There I saw that I could export as a Tiff.

  I figured what the hell and tried it out.  5 minutes later something happened but I had no idea where the file went.  So I tried again, this time with JPEGS instead of TIFFS, and made sure to find them after it was finished.

  HOLY SHIT! There were  thousands of them!  All of them individual frames from the video!

So I deleted the Tiffs (which are bigger files) and I am going to figure out how to get the 6,080 JPEGS (totaling 1.87GB) onto my jump drive.

This of course took a couple of times, and some cleaning to get them on there, but man is it worth it.   So now I have all the frames I need.  They are easy to print out and perfect for collecting reference when I don't have access to Premiere Pro.

The Storyboard Animatic of Learning pt. 17

        Holy fucking shit!!!  So I am sitting in the SCAD library at the moment, and just a little while ago I found out something I wish I had known a long time ago.  Like back when I was working ont he thumbnail video in After Effects.

        See there is this cute girl next to me who I was chatting with she is a motion media major.  Eventually I found out that she is using After Effects, and asked her how her cutouts became so clean.  She then told me that I can import PSD files.

        The importance of this is that for both the first and second thumbnail video I was using the pen tool to create my cut outs.  Some times this could take  a while, like 30 minutes.  The whole time I was wishing that I could use the quick select tool in Photoshop!  Revery single second of using that fucking pen tool!!

         Dear God, please let me remember this whenever I finally get to work on the final video.

Edit:   

Ahem!

 Of course there is a good lesson that can be learned from this as well.

          I would never have learned this had I not communicated with another artist or asked someone about it.  Really this is one of the nice things of being able to still sneak into SCAD labs.  Communication is key in learning and growing as an artist as well.   This is how you learn about new techniques,, things going on in the art world, or new angles on ideas that you would have never thought of before.  Art school can only do but so much in that regard.  Though it does make it it easier since everybody is crammed into classrooms, or labs, or working spaces.  

         I am not saying that I am very good at this myself.  In fact, I am doing this less and less actually.   the longer this project takes the more I am forsaking social interaction to make more progress on it.  Also I don't interact on Deviantart, Tumblr, or any of the other art related social networking websites.  However that does not change the importance of the need to communicate with other artists.

The Storyboard Animatic of Learning pt. 16

          So here is something that I did, that I feel is very smart.  I have these two scenes to draw, and one of them is really nothing more than a camera pan backwards.  So instead of of just redoing the whole environment, and starting from scratch on the next shot I made this in Illustrator.

If you'll notice, it is the same drawing with the problematic stairs.  Another 

reason to not it from scratch.  The outline is the size of the pieces of card stock that I use. 

         This way I could just tape the card stock over it and use a light board to make my life a whole lot easier.

A little after the light box stage but I am sure that you get the idea.

The Storyboard Animatic Project of Learning pt. 15

           So, I learned a new lesson that I will more than likely forget over and over again.  Here's what happened.  I was working on this environment and had to draw these stairs in perspective.

Now this my not seem to complicated, you just keep moving the triangle around a lot. However here are the stairs in scale.

quite tiny actually.

So after the first part was done, I had to do more along the side, getting tinier and tinier, like so.

some could say that I am overdoing it,and they are probably right.

             This was over the course of 8 fucking hours.  I am not kidding.  They were constantly getting of perspective, I had an impossible time figuring out each point, etc. etc.   Pretty much spending more time re correcting everything and frustratingly wondering why nothing worked.

(insert chibi picture)

Then I looked at my pencil tip.

That is a rather dull tip for really tiny drawings.

              Also my sharpener is not that good so sharpening it doesn't help.  So I realized that a  really tiny point, like say a .3 mm mechanical pencil, would be incredibly helpful.  So I went out and bought one a few days ago,  along with a bunch of lead for it as well.  It has stopped working since then.  Also once I had the really fine point, I also used a better sharpener that I had at home, I still had to go back and redo all the work I had previously done.

That line really helped keep the stairs even looking.

             But the good new is that I was able to get the stairs on both sides done a lot quicker and in easily half the time.

times this by infinity and take it to the depth of forever and

 you will have but a glimpse of what I am talking about.

           So there are two lessons here.One is to always use the tools needed for the job at hand.  This saves you a bunch of time and frustration and stress.  The second is to use a sharp point for fucks sake!  Nothing would have worked better than if I had used a sharp point from the beginning.  That would have been the most useful thing possible.  The image isn't even fully done yet.  There are an insane amount of smudges on the drawing from using the triangle so much. So I still have to light board the whole thing.

 p.s.       On the subject of useful tools. While I was working in my room for a little while instead of a SCAD building one tool was really useful.

broken, but still just as useful.

          It's called a rolling ruler and it is awesome with find straight lines really quickly.  You just need to have some for the edge of the ruler and the paper to be flush against.  For me, that is a piece of cardboard glued to my drafting table.  Sadly I can't do that in the SCAD buildings so it is not something that I can always use.

A Pro Bono Project of the Storyboard Kind pt.5

        As I was adding in all the text and notes, to the boards I realized I had missed a board completely.  My two options are just to insert a page with an empty box, or re cut and paste everything and keep it looking professional.  I chose the later, which means that I wasted around 4 hours of work.  However the more professional the work I do looks the better I look as an artist.

         The real lesson is that I should have just been inserting the text as well while I was cutting and pasting earlier,  that way I would not have wasted as much time and discovered the mistake earlier.  Hopefully lesson learned.

           So in this is what the storyboards look like finalized.
                     

            This took me over 12 hours to do.  Due to fixing up boards, adding a couple of shots, and generally constantly getting board numbers and shot calls wrong.  However finally it is finished.  Now I just need to get the files to the guy.

The critique:

 - The boards are rushed and horrible, however they are readable and you can tell what is going on in them.

- I finished on time and am now waiting to her back from the guy so that I can get him the files. Big Plus there.

- Using the drafting tape became a waste of effort since I wound up cutting and pasting the images into a different file.  I really wish I had remembered that, given how frustrating the drafting tape is to use and that the leftover tack did effect my images in the end.  Big mistake there.

- I should have really been adding the notes as I was doing the original cutting and pasting, that would have saved me a lot of time.  I mean a lot of time.  Big mistake as well.

A Pro Bono Project of the Storyboard Kind pt.4

After all the drawings are done then I went ahead and scanned them.

Followed by a litte photoshop to up the contrast and remove the blue lines in the images.  Leaving me with something like this.

However, these are sadly messy with eraser bites and tack from the drafting tape I used.  So now I need to use photoshop to clean up the areas around the images with the simple method of cutting and pasting the board images.  So now they look like this.

The images aren't cleaned up like everything else but it still looks more professional, which is a very important habit to have even with rushed, pro bono projects.   Now all I need to do is add the notes, shot numbers, etc.

A Pro Bono Project of the Storyboard Kind pt.3

After the thumbnails come the final images.  The rushed, done at the last minute storyboards.

Just look at that hand. Ouch.

So basically I drew these out.  The final count of images turned out to be about 147 images, done in a very short amount of time.  So, these probably aren't going to go into a portfolio anytime soon.

This is a story of how I guy gives up in life.  This can already be seen when the character stops using gloves and ice, also when he smokes pot.  This however happens at the end of a number a scenes where bad stuff happens.  I decided to help show the progression by changing the characters clothing with each. I decided to try and help emphasize this with the main characters clothing. 

First he is wearing basically a suite with the jacket, along with an apron.  As if he is trying to be a professional as possible.

Then goes the tie and the sleeves are rolled up.   He is not trying to look overly professional.

Now the apron is gone and the food stains are on his shirt, making it a mess.  Maybe as if he has stopped caring but is still trying to look nice.

Now he is just in shorts and a t-shirt.  He has stopped caring bout being professional or looking nice completely.

      Also more drafting tape uses!

      This allows creates a professional look by keeping the edges of the drawing area clean and neat.  The problem with doing this is that the tack gets left behind and has to be wiped off, or it looks bad.  Also the tape wears out wears out very quickly, so I go through a lot of it. 

There is a third lesson as well.  ALWAYS USE TWO PERSPECTIVE POINTS!!!

For instance,

This image is very off.  I was rushing and being stupid so I tried to fudge the other perspective point and be quick about it.  Bad idea.  

Now with the second perspective point it looks a lot better.  So is my lesson learned?  Sadly, probably not.

A Pro Bono Project of the Storyboard Kind pt.2

The next stage in the project is the storyboards.  Generally I like to also have some books with me as well.

These are my thumbnails,  Normally I want to do two runs of thumbnails, but this is a rush job and I only did 1.5 runs of thumbnails for this project.

Look at all these thumbnails!

At one point, I got stuck bad on trying to figure out the shots for the film.  So I actually did something smart.  I made a couple of quick crude lists to help me get the mental juices flowing properly.

Afterwards, I emailed them to the person I am doing the storyboards for to makes sure they were happy with with the shot calls I was choosing.