DOT & a line: Guidelines for Telling a Story

Develop a simple story about a "Dot and line". Your DOT will be animated to show movement from frame to frame and your will be confronted with some sort of conflict and resolution.

Guidelines are not rules, but a formula that can be used to suit your creative imagination. Several avenues exist for storytelling, such as journalistic reporting, sequential images that reveal a moment, photographic poetry, and narrative. The following guidelines are for narrative.

A good story has characters in action with a beginning, middle, and an ending. A lot of information can be given in a single setting. Location, time, and atmosphere aid viewer imagination.

1. Establish characters and location.
2. Create a situation with possibilities of what might happen.
3. Involve the characters in the situation.
4. Build to probable outcomes.
5. Have a logical, but surprising, end.

You will first brainstorm/doodle ideas of what to do with your DOT. You can try this site for starters- Flipbook Animator Site


Another fun animation idea site: drawastickman.com


Then develop your idea in a storyboard: Identify key moments, in the story ie: actions, changes in scene, shifts in movement, and events that help to relay the idea tied into the story.