Another Draft

I've pretty much done a 4th storyboard for my short film and this is what I'm thinking..

Third Draft

I drew this up on huge sheets of paper going through the story from the characters perspective looking at motivation and dialogue. I then cut all the boxes up and laid out the storyboard like this trying to get rid of as many boxes as possible, streamlining. It's really helpful to see the entire story in one glance, especially when looking for a theme to pin the whole thing on.

Inspiration

I've been Trawling through second hand shops and book fairs for New Zealand scenery.

Paper Characters #1

Progress has been a bit sporadic on my short film project of late. Between other projects I've been doodling characters, trying to find shapes that fit together and tell you who the characters are with no preamble.
I really like simple geometric shaped characters, I think this goes back to my time as a graphic designer but it's also about animation itself. To me the magic of animation is in watching non real objects come alive, or representing recognisable movements and characteristics through non real objects. The perfect example of this is of course stop motion which I love to watch (check out Pez). But I come from a print design background so I have this inbuilt need to have everything flat and looking like it was printed.

To try and emulate the idea of assembling objects to create a character (after doodling for a while that is) I like to collage the characters together with paper. This gets rid of any extraneous detail and brings the character back to being an object first before animation breaths life into it. It's also a great way to play with colour, having no outlines to define edges each colour must sit strongly against the others and also together hold a characters shape.

Character Doodles #2

Character Doodles #1

River Study