I really wanted to put a lot more feeling and expression into my sequence after seeing the animatic I produced (see below). I started out with a few ideas for close ups and editing some of the narrative out for effect and ended up practically redoing the storyboard altogether! Some valuable lessons about project management to be learnt...expect the unexpected kinda sums it up! This is not how I anticipated making progress but it has been a thorough process which gives me much more confidence that the finished article will live up to the terms of the brief. I've given a cartoony feel to the imagery and employed a few comic strip devices (as they did in early 20th century animation) like movement lines to emphasise action. Zooming in has proved an effective way of highlighting important themes. I hope it comes across well cause it's almost impossible to evaluate something you're standing so close to.
I've been working on an animatic for my animation brief, Relationships. The result, above, is a flash movie that should help me figure out timing and spacing on my final product. Flash is completely new to me and I find the control and interface incredibly intuitive. It's easy to pick up and get started although I can see that the trade off here is that it is more limited than say, Maya, as an animation tool. For the purposes of the Relationships brief I think that it is appropriate as I don't want to struggle with the modelling in Maya or stop motion at the expense of the real focus of the task. I will find it easier to concentrate on the movement, weight, spacing and timing if i am not being distracted by considerations like texture, lighting and rendering. Maya looks like a challenging and enjoyable journey, but one which will need a commitment of years to get fully to grips with!