Storyboarding: planning your visual story

Brainstorm-
Before you start story boarding your animation, you need to brain storm,  write down your ideas in point form, doodle,
Write a Script-
Then write it out a script could be in paragraph or point form. It may be short, but it is a starting point to organize your thoughts.

Storyboard-
Then try to visually and roughly draw your idea in a storyboard. The essence of the story board it to organize your ideas, and to use it as a guide when putting your final piece together.

Some Storyboard Suggestions:

• Keep it simple, don't worry if you are not a great artist, you don't have to go into detail.
• Don not draw all of the frames. Only draw out key changes, significant changes in movement, or the story line.
• Draw in pencil, 
• Sometimes drawing a grid will give your frames depth.
• Give the basic essence of your story- beginning, middle/conflict, end resolutions

Storyboard from Wall-e

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.

Favorite Animations Pt.2

 

Today we are going to view several of your chosen favourite animations.

After each one, we are going to identify the animation technique and possible ways that the animations were constructed.
Then we are going to identify the main character(s), story- conflict and resolution. 

Here's a few of my favorite cartoons:
Duck Amuck
(notes on) Biologyand

We will view these and identify different animation techniques, character representation, conflict, use of sound, background, and irony.

Blender Questions Jan. 8

Hey Donna,

Happy New Year to you as well. It's cool to know that your class is independently producing these projects in blender now. I will try my best to answer questions as soon as I can.

Answer to Question 1. How to extend the animation time line... we tried in the dope sheet...



Answer to Question 2. How do we copy an animated object that has been bone tool-ed.




If you want the copied object to move the same way the first one did, go into object mode, right click on the object, hold shift, then right click on the bone controlling the object, then press shiftD to copy both the bone and it's object. You should now have 2 objects, each with their own bones which move in the same motion.

If you want to take that first object, and make a second copy that doesn't move, follow this image:


Answer to Question 3. How to save files from separate blender files and transfer them to one blender file
Appending files:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxD7FGeGR9Q


Alex,
alexander.honeywell@gmail.com

3D Animation in Hollywood.

Here some examples of what 3D animators do in the industry. You can see that their process is similar to your own 3D animation project. They thought of a story, made the characters and scenes and then rigged and animated them.  

Toy Story 3

Rango

Beginning your 3D animation

Intro to Project

1. Get into groups. Choose well.
2. Your animated shorts must tell a story yet can have a simple concept. The story/characters/visuals are there to evoke emotion. Do you want your viewers to laugh, cry, feel angry, feel afraid, etc.
3. Research other animated shorts:

• Who are the characters?
• What is the conflict?
• Describe the scene, mood, atmosphere, style?
• What camera perspectives are used? Why?
• Is the conflict resolved at the end? How?

Planning

4. Collaborate to generate many ideas about your own animated short (sketch, talk, act out your ideas).
5. Agree as a group on the best idea for your animated short.
6. Sketch out a rough storyboard.
7. Come up with a plan for production: Split up tasks (who works on effects, characters and the scene)

Also, if you want to animate a character with limbs or smalle moving parts, you will need to use bones.

For simple characters that have limbs, watch this:

Skin modifier

If you already have a model that needs to be rigged, watch this:

Rigging a model

Particles in Blender

Adding a particle system to an object is really awesome if you want to animate hundreds or even thousands of smaller objects or particles. This could be smoke, fire, water, mud, snow, sparks, bees, rocks, trees, ANYTHING! You could use particles in the scene of your animation or even as part of the characters.

Intro to particle systems. 

If you understand this and want to do more with particles, watch these tutorials below. Also check out BlenderGuru.com  because he also uses particle systems in complex ways. 

Dissolving an object

Making a galaxy.