ANI181 - Week 1

What? So what? Now what?

The class did introductions so we could familiarize ourselves with each other and understand what our interests and strengths are in regards to animation.

The class also requested to see my showreel of my VFX work and I explained how some of the shots were made.

I began work the first project of this trimester - Micro Production. I quickly came up with an idea of a bank robber who tries to unlock the bank vault's keypad with a hacking gadget but the gadget fails. In his frustration the robber smashes the keypad which ends up unlocking the vault instead.

As my drawing skills leave much to be desired I used pencil on paper as it is more comfortable for me than a tablet and began fleshing out the idea by writing a list of the actions each frame of the storyboard will feature. Then I made a super rough storyboard to get feedback from the teacher, Rafi.

Rafi suggested to take into account how much effort and time I'll realistically be able to put in to make this. I decided to combine the first two shots as the opening only needed to establish location and time quickly.

He also gave critique to the angles I was showing in my storyboard (which I didn't put much thought into, to be honest and I was just trying to get the idea down quickly). Rafi suggested thinking about including more close up shots, especially of the character.

I made a revision on a new piece of paper and changed the camera angles to better display each action beat of the story. Rafi then suggested add in a shot of a clock at the front to further embed the idea that it is after hours at the bank and also to add a reaction shot of the bank robber as he his failing to override the keypad. To do this I split shot 8 into two different shots and placed the reaction shot in-between them.

Overall Rafi's feedback was very constructive and helped me flesh out my idea.