Applied: Dividing out roles

Since the interim crit we have tweaked our Gantt chart, and divvied up different roles. I wrote the copy for the pitch bible whilst Rosie and Brenda prepared assets such as the concept art and pre-production imagery. The pitch bible will be an ongoing process which will be completed as we go along the production schedule.

It was decided that the most important thing for a consistent visual feel to the piece is the watercolour painted backgrounds. As Rosie and Brenda's styles differ wildly and I am an unexperienced painter, we chose Brenda to paint all the background for the video. The brush pack that Rosie prepared for us will allow us all to chip in with the digital painting, which - for two reasons - will not be so jarring as if the backgrounds were jointly painted.
Firstly, because the character colours will be animated, and therefore always in motion, it will be more difficult to notice any stylistic differences that may occur between the three of us.
Secondly, due to the nature of digital painting, graphics tablets, the limits of the brush pack, and a simplified and restricted colour palette, our individual styles are likely to be less distinct from each other than they would be if we were attempting to paint with natural media.

Rosie has been given the role of animating keys, which I will then in-between, and Brenda is going to paint backgrounds. Once Brenda is finished with the painting she will join either me or Rosie, depending on which one of us looks like they need most help. This will hopefully free me up to begin on compositing the various scenes.

Applied: Animatic

Here is our animatic for Noeline's story. Rosie cut the audio down from its original length but was careful not manipulate Noeline's words.

Whilst quite fiddly, it wasn't difficult to make the animatic, as the timings of each shot were mostly dictated to us by the pace that Noeline delivers her story.

Applied: Rosie's media tests

We decided quite early on that we wanted to use watercolours in the animation for two main reasons. Firstly that they would add a lovely hazy wet feel to a story which revolves around water, rain and flooding. Secondly that Noeline is recounting a story that happened nearly 80 years ago - and that hazy feel will also add to the idea of the story being a distant and foggy memory.

Whilst I was getting on with the storyboards and animatic, and Brenda was designing characters and creating their style sheets, it was Rosie's task to test out different media so we could decide how to actually go about creating frames. It was decided that painting in Photoshop using special watercolour brushes would be the quickest and most efficient way to animate whilst retaining the look we want. Rosie has prepared a list of the best brushes she found in her tests.

Applied: Storyboards

Here are our storyboards for Noeline's story about the flood. I am turning these into an animatic synced with the voice recording.