Creating a story in the way that our program is takes a lot of time and dedication, but one of the most important parts is flexibility and the ability to transfer ideas through different mediums. When it comes to putting a vision into motion, it can be hard to transfer what's in your head into something that you can see. Storyboarding and beat-boarding are fantastic ways to go about this process and can help visualize ideas for the rest of the group or whoever is involved.
This week that's what our group focused on. Since the day for pitches was steadily approaching, we put our efforts into effectively portraying all of our ideas and plans into storyboards. In the previous post, I talked about creating beat-boards and setting up storyboards, which ultimately took a different direction after I familiarized myself with Adobe Photoshop's timeline feature.
I was able to work on the storyboards for Act 1 and Act 3 for the Alien Coffee Shop or Alienation as my group agreed for the title. The first act was split amongst two individuals from my group, me being included within those two. I took the beginning of Act 1, doing a sketch using stick figures and a rough mockup that captured the ideas and the flow of both movement and emotion through the scene and character respectively.
I also took the entirety of Act 3, a shorter act considering I was by myself working on these and there was a time constraint involving both this class and another class. Using the same methodology as the examples above, I did a sketchy version of the animatic as well as a more detailed version showing off the character and movements more clearly.
With this process, I was able to see which frames were unnecessary, what needed to be cut out and rearranged, and what still needs to be added for the future. Examples of this, include the alien café, we still need a visual representation of the actual coffee shop, but we were going to leave that part as well as exact designs for the character for future development.
Our group is also working on putting everything together and factoring in what we're going to say for our pitches.
Although having confidence is an important part, it is equally important to supply substance for future plans and investments of projects. When it comes to planning out logistics, laying down the foundation is vital for future prospects, especially with a long term project such as a feature film or a short story.