Storyboard 2

Storyboard 2: Star Paws 

After doing some research on different types of animation, during the same week as I created the first animation on the previous posts, I came up with another idea for an animation, one that I chose from that book, the amazing story teller. Which I preferred over the previous idea, I had a flick through and looked at my brain storm, with ideas I came up with for animation storylines. I came up with Star Paws.

That storyline was: On a leap year, a talking dog goes to Mars. 

I thought this storyline was great. It had a narrative that I can easily turn into a story of some kind, that makes sense and works well. 

Storyboard One of Two

First Half of Star Paws Storyboard

Second Half of Star Paws Storyboards

The story to this one is fairly self explanatory because it literally is what you see is what you get. Meaning that a man causally walks his dog, on the night before the leap year. Then we come to the realisation that its in fact it is the morning of the leap year, and the dog suddenly speaks to it's owner and in shock the owner faints into the faces of the earth, then the dog sees an advert to sign up to a K-nine mission to Mars, and the dog signs up for the mission, then blasts off to Mars and in this sequence, we find the dog finds,  what he needs for his mission, next stop back to reality and we realise it was just a dream and the 1st of march begins.

Which to be honest with you, I like this storyline and thought about going along with it and maybe going a bit further about the space mission part of the story but it had me realise we had to create films for 30 seconds long. meaning that if I were to do that I'd have to whittle down bits from the beginning of my story which I feel wouldn't make much sense as there has to be a reason behind the dog going to mars, seeing as part of the storyline does specifically say "On a leap year" so I wanted to obey that and include more of that into the film so there is a narrative and a purpose to this animation.  Which my friend and classmate Noah, helped me come to realise if a story has to be 30 seconds, the best thing to do is look back at what I have written on my storyboard, follow it and start cutting bits down that either doesn't seem as important for a narrative or seem a bit too detailed or mumbled up.

So as you'll find on the next attempt below, I have used the same storyline as the storyboard above, but in this one I have shorted it down so it creates a much simpler storyline, cutting bits off that may make the story seem very long lagged which was the last bit more and less, I got as far as seeing the dog succeeds on landing on mars, as I saw that as a space mission in itself, I feel if I continued with the possibilities as to what could happen in mars you know yes the dog meet an alien dog and live happily or what have you,  I can't lie I like that concept with the man waking up realising the whole thing was just a dream, but I don't know about you, personally think that would of been well out of context and be too long of a  storyline without it getting to complex and seem a little bit out of context.  As well as including that added part to the story in a short 30 second film.

Unless I decided to try cramming it all together, meaning that I would all have really fast frame movement as in more frames per second, so each second is combusted in a faster moving sensation. Which, feel that would initially ruin the purpose of the animation itself, and the intention of this creation, as I want to try to make a good story out of that in a way the storyline is simple and slick and easy to understand without the confusing with the super fast frames per second footage. I wanted to keep the story short and sweet, with a beginning, middle and an end. "Keep it simple" Noah said. Which I can't say I disagree with him on that one, as they say Less is more, which I am starting to believe these days,  so that's exactly how I created plan B below.

Storyboard Two of Two

First Half of Star Paws Storyboard

(This is a sketchy storyboard drawn in pencil A really basic creation summing up my film, star paws)

Second half of Star Paws Storyboard

This storyboard here is the guide I will follow when, I create and film this animation, I intend on following this guide almost as precisely as clinically possible. 

I feel this storyboard is much simpler, especially for it being a 30 second film I feel what I have here is enough to fit a 30 second clip. 

Ideally, I get these sheets were supposed to mark each frame but really I essentially wanted to mark the key points to my story, otherwise it would one, take too long and secondly, I would most probably forget what the other ideas to my story was, if I didn't put the essential parts to the story onto it, this here was more a glimpse guide explaining the story and my process behind it. Which as I pointed at the beginning of this entry that I found my idea for this story from the amazing story story generator. Which was very helpful, on my half as with me I wither have an idea and go madly into it or I would struggle to come up with a starting point, once I have a little prompt/guide like that book, then I'm away with creating ideas to create a story out of that sentence: 'On a leap year, a talking dog went to mars.'

For the titles or text in this film, I am not sure if you can read what I've put... or even if i've put this on the storyboard, that I hope to be a bit creative on what I use for the text, I saw laying around some scrabble pieces, used for card making and arts and crafts, I thought it be interesting if I could possibly use those for the text or any titles and credits and what have you. I feel it be more interesting and unique as well as exploring experimentation processes with text and type to add to the visuals, so I hope to use those at some aspects for this piece I wish to create. So my animation can be visual using Typographic aspects to my animation. As well as incorporating the aspects of exploring 2D animation and Stop motion, if I create my characters and backdrops,  Illustrator, as I want to challenge myself much more in this unit, to show myself further into the deep end, by using Illustrator more, after being shown the basic grasps of this programme this term in Jordan's technical workshops on the Thursdays, I wanted to put what i've learnt from this sessions into this project and maybe incorporate photoshop for adapting effects on my illustrations if they require it, as I don't want to toss Photoshop aside too, as I can benefit using the bestow both worlds and then eventually, edit my footage onto Premiere. I hope to do all of that, when I create this animation. I intend on doing so by design my characters and backdrops onto illustrator, edit them on Photoshop if they need it, to then film and create my footage and edit on Premiere Pro. 

As well as explore a variety of different animation styles and techniques after researching and realising how many animation styles and techniques there are, I hope to incorporate a couple of those styles and techniques together to create something new.

For the name of the film, Star Paws, I came up with essentially as a bit of wordplay, considering this short movie clip is all space orientated and paws, for obvious reasons being the featuring character is a canine. Not just because of a take on Star Wars! I can promise you now!! Besides it was either that or it was Space Pup, which I felt the title space pup sounded pretty lame, to be honest I wanted a short and snappy title for this film but something more exciting than Space pup, space pup sounds too obvious, I like the idea of a short and snappy title that sums up the clip without giving too much away before people have seen the footage and I felt this title, Star Paws worked better for that. People may assume it's a 30 second Mickey take on a scene fro Star Wars.

 I doubt it be the case, but they may think I've created the characters as dogs instead of humans or lego people. Which in fairness that does sound like a fun idea to play with, but that wasn't really what I was going for on this occasion. So I stuck to the name Star Paws.