THUMBNAIL SKETCHES
28/02/2021
Once we’ve decided on the plot points of the animation, we went off and did all the thumbnail sketches according to how we interpreted them.
It wasn’t definitive what the alien character looked like, though I thought it would be interesting if it could shapeshift, so it didn’t have to hold on appearance throughout.
I aimed to create a dramatic buildup in the first few shots, with anticipation for a Mars landing to discover impressive new life, just for the astronaut to come face-to-face to an incredibly unremarkable creature, appearance lacking any complexities scientists have hypothesized and not having a lot to say about anything.
When discussing the satire aspect of the animation, NASA funding was also mentioned. I thought that this disappointing encounter could be emphasized by showing the NASA control room full of people witnessing this encounter and rendered speechless as to what they were supposed to do next.
We met up again to create a rough storyboard using a combination of our thumbnail sketches. Our ideas were very similar, though there was still variety in our sketches that could be combined to create a cohesive story with a clear narrative.
TVPAINT
01/03/2021
After watching the tutorials on how to use TVPaint, I didn’t have a lot of trouble following the steps so I thought that this would be something I could maneuver quite easily.
Things couldn’t be that easy, of course. My interface came up incredibly small, and nothing was as it seemed as I found myself repeating a step again and again to no avail. It took a while to figure everything out and even then there were still bumps along the way.
It wasn’t too frustrating, although it did slow down the process of putting everything together, with the added difficulty of working together through a call and my partner couldn’t hear the audio when we were timing the shots out. We managed to just about get through it as I voiced the characters myself to show him what point in the audio we were at and how we should time them out. After a little back-and-forth of file-sharing, our rough animatic was done.
ANIMATIC
02/03/2021
It was another bumpy start on TVPaint as we begin to refine our animatic. The shortcuts were different to the usual drawing software, so it took a while for me to get used to them. Taking some time to change them all to the usual shortcuts I was familiar with might be key.
It was a process of experimenting with the program, slowly learning how the layers and frames worked, then it wasn’t as daunting anymore.
We decided to work on different shots, starting with ones that were repeated a few times for efficiency, now listening closely to the audio and adding the key movements. Though we weren’t constantly discussing everything anymore as we were working separately, it was a nice working environment to chat and ask each other for help with the program when we were stuck. It was a pleasant reminiscent of working in in-person classes and chatting with peers as we worked on different things.
The refined animatic combining both of our works looks like this: