Finalised Minor Animatic:

This third iteration of my animatic hopefully holds a stronger and more linear story that's easier to follow, striking a better balance between simplicity and complex world building.

The Moon spirit, Yin and Yang venture out their cabin to forage for plants and natural ingredients. The trio interact with their forest environment and its spirit inhabitants, discovering strange glowing berries and paying respects to ancient overgrown religious statues. Back at the cabin, the sun starts to set. Our main character stands amongst the trees and lifts the moon into the sky, an errand she must undertake every night.

When I developed this ending, It felt like a natural fit. I was shocked to have not thought of such a simple idea sooner, seeing as my main character is a physical embodiment of the moon. I received permission to use this song (Low Tide by Umber) when I outgrew the duration of the song Blocks, which I used in my scrapped animatic (1.9).

Finalised Minor Storyboard:

Below shows the frames from my Animatic as a storyboard. Interestingly, most of the opening sequence in part 1 has made it through all three narrative iterations of this projects' concept. The rest however, has been changed from its original in Premise.

Animatic 1.9 (rough) - SCRAPPED:

In this adaptation of my animatic, I have removed the more ambitious narrative elements. These have been replaced with a story that simply follows my trio of characters as they forage around their woodland environment. The animatic ends with the discovery of a derelict van, and the remains of a road. The camera eventually pans upwards to reveal a distant blinking satellite moving across the sky. The narrative is therefore an eventual reveal that this universe is a distant future from our own, with derelict remnants of our current society scattered around the woodland landscape.

This animatic is considerably shorter and is also extremely rough, created solely to figure out pacing and to determine if the music was a suitable fit (the song is Blocks by Maxy Dutcher). Compositions are vague; I like to add finer narrative details as I think of them during the 3d process. Because 2d to 3d don't always translate.

This animatic is less graphically ambitious, therefore benefitting my workload, but still rich in soft world building. I also received permission to use this song from the musician Maxy Dutcher.

I eventually scrapped this animatic as I felt it strayed too far from my initial ideas in Premise. Incorporating technology so suddenly at the end felt forced and, as I kept coming back to re-watch, tarnished its pacing. I also felt it was trying copy existing work, like Simon Stalenhag, who's signature narrative style involves the infusion of nature and derelict/ scifi technology.

Finalised Minor Animatic (rough):

Here's the sketchier version of my finalised animatic. I kept a lot of these messy illustrations in my final animatic at a very low opacity, drawing tidier versions on top. Having messy base sketches made my frames more dynamic, and helped include shadow/ shading.

Sketches:

Below are some sketches, in which I explored how my trio of main characters might interact with their environment. I wanted to learn about them, and how they might each respond differently to different tasks, like foraging. These sketches were motivated by the unsuccess of my scrapped animatic. Many of these sketches, from actions to whole compositions, can be seen throughout my new finalised animatic. These pages are shown in chronological order and they gradually become more refined and confident as I start piecing together shots and scenes.