From the course: Animation Pipeline Production

Storyboard analysis

From the course: Animation Pipeline Production

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Storyboard analysis

- [Instructor] Animation is a visual medium, and storyboards are the way we see our script come alive. We're going to take a look at some storyboards that I've made for our short project, and break down what we need from them. Now, if you've never drawn a storyboard before, I recommend you check out Dermot O'Connor's Animation Foundations in Storyboarding course that's in the online training library. Let's come back and look at our storyboards, and go over what's happening. In the beginning we see Good Hillary taking a breath, (exhaling) and then getting ready to run out. The important thing here isn't so much the great drawing or what's in the background or any of it; no, the point of this is to establish where Hillary is in relation to the camera. She's on the right third. She's facing screen left. And what the main actions are for the character. In this case, she's taking a deep breath, and running very concentrated like into screen left. And then we're going to cut wider. This is important because we don't really need to draw all the specifics of the set. Here we're just trying to establish what's in front of her, what's going on, just enough so that a modeler or layout artist knows what to build into the scenes. In this case, Hillary sees wall, and she's going to climb on top of it. Here we're going to cut a little bit tighter. We can see Hillary pulling up. We can potentially either cut or zoom back out to see Evil Hillary in the distance. We're going to be really close on her while completely framing Good Hillary. That'll make her feel small in the camera, and thus, a little bit more vulnerable. Then we're going to cut much tighter on Evil Hillary. We're going to zoom right in to those eyes and to those fist. That's what we really care about. That's the most precious moment here for our animation project. So, we're going to cut really tight, and then completely counter that with a super-wide cut where we see the entire action happening. We don't have to draw every kick or punch, or anything; we just have to establish where they're at, what's going on, and what the camera angles show. Finally, once Evil Hillary is subdued, we cut tighter to a nice medium shot. She's now in the center of the frame. Good Hillary has triumphed. And we're done. Now that we've gone through the storyboards, let's go ahead and break them down into this little drawing that I've set up here. You don't need Photoshop for this. You could do this on pen, paper, crayons if you really wanted to. What we really want to establish is: where are the characters, where are they moving, and where are the cameras. So let's make up a legend really quick. I'll say H is Good Hillary, E is Bad Hillary, and C are cameras. I'm going to zoom in a little bit, and I'm going to say that this is going to be our set that Hillary is going to run and jump on and climb over. And then I'm going to say the fight is going to happen right over here. So let's go ahead and start with Good Hillary. She's going to be right over here. Little dot to represent her. And the camera's going to be fairly close to her. We'll say C, camera number one, C1. I'll fill this in so we know that it looks like a camera. And she's going to run to screen left. So we're going to make a little line over here. Of course, this is the left side and this is the right side of our camera. She's going to run to the left. We're going to cut really wide. Let me move over here really quick. We're going to say the camera's going to be somewhere out here in space. This is camera number two. Hillary's going to go forward, climb up this wall, and end somewhere about here. This is camera number two, and this is still Hillary. Hillary. And then we're going to be really tight, right about here. This'll be camera number three. We're going to just focus on Hillary right about in the middle. And then, you can either zoom or you can set this up as a brand-new camera. We're going to pull back out a lot, and we're going to say camera number four is going to be here, Evil Hillary is going to be over here. So, E for evil. And then we're going to reverse that really quick, cut super close. Sometimes I like to do it this way so that I know that that's a really tight camera. This is camera number five. We're going to look right at Evil Hillary. Number six is where things get really wide. So let's do one of those. Doesn't have to be the best camera drawing. It doesn't even need to be exactly where the cameras are at. We're just trying to establish where all the action's happening. It looks like we're going to clash right here in the middle. Make a big ol' dot, kind of represent that. And then, Good Hillary wins; Evil Hillary has lost. We're going to get really tight again right here with camera number seven. Again, I can change these cameras once we're actually in 3D, but what I'm trying to do is establish the flow of action, where the cameras are at, about how many I'm going to need, where are all the characters, figure out if there's any important set stuff, and, finally, making sure that I don't cross 180-degree line unless I absolutely want to or need to. Now that I've gone ahead and broken down my storyboard, I recommend you go ahead and break down your storyboards, and prepare for the next phase of this animation project: building it out in 3D.

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