Animatic

I think that for me making the story is the hardest part of the production pipeline and getting your audience to engage with the characters too is important. I want to create an animation that my target audience can relate to, my aim is to create empathy and sympathy for my target audience as I want to get a feeling and a reaction from them. My target audience is both adults and children as they will both find the animation appealing. After looking at my storyboards my tutor and I agreed that this story would be most benificial as it is universal, another reason to why I chose this story was because I want to make the animation with no dialog so that it could be understood by all languages. The story is quite simple but it gives me the opportunity to allow my characters to tell the story through facial expression and body language; as character building and animation is my favourite area of CG animation. After going to the Edd Hooks master class I learned quite alot about projecting a character and how to use them to relate to the audience. It's more about the power centre of the character, the body structure can tell so much about a character. I think that alot of my target audience will symaphise with my main character but some will have empathy as they would relate to him. We all know how it feels to be a child and to have no control over a situation. I wasn't at all sure what to do for my final project as I wanted to create an animation to the best of my potential but the advice I had from my tutors was to create something that is personal and something that I can relate to. This is the animatic to my storyboard that I came up with thinking about my childhood; as a child my mother was quite strict so I used her influence in my animation... but exaggerated. I want the audience to feel for the child so I took away his objective by having his mother giving him endless jobs in the garden whilst he wants to go and play with his ball (conflict with situation). I thought about a hobby for the boy and what toy he would have a love for, I know that a ball has been used alot but it is a toy that almost every child has, or if not a ball something in replace of a ball ie stone, empty can etc. The story was fine but their needed to be an objective for the mother... why did she want all the jobs doing in the garden? I decided to use a garden competition for the reason of the mother wanting the garden looking nice. I will show the neighbours gardens first looking lovely and colourful but then we see a contrast as the camera pans to their scruffy overgrown garden. As the camera pans into the house we see a wall of photo's showing the mother and son; this will give the impression of a single parent and that is why the garden is so over grown.... it's too much work for her. So her only help around the house is her young child; that is a little how it was in my childhood, as a single parent my mother did all of the house work but we would help her in the garden, weeding, mowing the lawn, brushing up leaves etc. Single parents will relate to the mother and will emphasise with her as they know how it feels to be on their own. At the same time they will emphasise with the boy as they too have been a child and will know how it feels to have no control over a situation.

After speaking to my tutor and class mates today, we talked a little about the look of the animation, I need to alter some of my props, having wall paper pealing off the walls, perhaps a cluttereed house and also furniture standing outside the front of the house, this will also give the impression that the mother has no time to do the work around the house... perhaps because she is working to earn money to live and survive... what we all have to do; although children don't understand this and to them a mother who gives them jobs to do around the house is mean. As a child I did understand that my mum was on her own and although I wanted to go and play I would help her. I really want the look of this animation to be right and give the right impression to the audience, the problem I am having is time is running out.... but as part of the module we have the opportunity to have the 2nd years working with us on our films; which is great as they have also given me some visual idea's :)

This animatic is a little long and i'd like to squash it down atleast a minute. My tutor and class mates are going to have a look at this animatic and after having feedback I hope to have a shorter finalised animatic. Instead of the ball staying on the lawn mower I will cut out the ball bouncing on the flowers and instead have the ball bouncing from the lawn mower.... the camera will cut to the lawn mower going through the fence and back to the ball as it rolls to his mother feet... camera pans up to her looking angry. It's hard which area's to cut out as I do feel it is slightly too long. I have tried to make it so that it flows and with out the actions you wouldn't get the emotion. I am thinking of cutting out the shed part... but with out the heavy jobs his mother wouldn't feel the guilt. The ending is where she has a change of heart and surrenders to her son, weighing up her options to either give her son another job or to give him his ball so that he can go and play... she passes him his ball. Giving her son an even better reward (her playing football with him) we soon see a change of heart in her son when he see's their neighbours gardens looking flourishing and colourful.... again him weighing up his options we are revealed that he has also had a change of heart, not only helping his mother but having a big input on the way it looks, he uses his passion and influence of his main objective by persuing his mothers objective. Together they create a unique garden inspired by a football.


I have had to split my animatic up into parts..


Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5



Part 6