Month: January 2023

The content of this week is divided into two parts. The first part is to modify the 2D storyboard after receiving feedback, and the second part is to find materials on the Internet to build the story scene. I mainly focused on the 2d storyboard changes, and spent a small amount of time finding assets and setting up the scene.

Part 1: 2D Storyboard Modifications

《Accept a stray dog》

Because the ending of the previous version of the story was a bit blunt. So I drew a second version of the 2d storyboard to modify the end of the story.

Part 2: Creating Establishing shots

Before the story begins, I should concider where the story takes place. My story takes place in a small town, based on the pictures I made in the mood board last week. Therefore, I chose flat houses and streets, shops and so on. I chose some assets to build my scene from Sketchfab.

Plan: Next week I will continue to complete the construction of the scene and create a 3D storyboard.

This week, to further develop idea1, I started thinking about building the world of my story. Include scene setting and prop setting in it, and think about how these items will affect the character. And I should consider a very important content in the formation of this animation—the mood board, which uses color as the emotional tone of the story, and can also use this color to consider the environment and color of the subsequent story to affect the direction of the entire story.

• First, I learned what is worldbuilding.
• World building: The content required for the setting of the world view includes the era of the story background, if it is history, which stage of history is it, and what events affect the story. Or consider where the story exists, from the perspective of geographical location, which country it is in, what kind of style and architectural appearance it has, and so on. From a biological point of view, you can also analyze what kind of species live in your story, how these species will affect your world, whether it is a barren environment or a rich wild environment, etc.
• Secondly, I began to consider the relevance of the world building and prop design, as well as the importance of prop design.
• Prop Design: After creating the story and the background of the story, consider the props that might appear in the story. These props may be used in the scene to affect the advancement of the story, or to assist the background of the story. From the perspective of geographical environment and architectural style, props can be used for decoration.
• After understanding these contents, I will further add the world setting and prop design to my story.

Following last week’s script, I created a 2D storyboard.

2D Storyboard：

Plot：A homeless puppy was fed by a man heading home with geoceries. The puppy tried to look for the man door to door and finally found the find man’s house. Looking through the window, the puppy found out the man’s plan to adopt a Shiba Inu. Feeling hopless, the puppy crawled back to the carton boxes near the trash in the alley. Surprisingly, the man appeared at the end of the alley. He walked towards the puppt, bent down and had his hands out to the puppy.

Moodboard:

After deciding on the content of the story, I created the mood board. The story is set as a puppy living near a park near shops and residential areas, so it can easily deal with local residents who buy food, and in the case of following the residents, it finally finds its own home.

I personally prefer the style of two small towns. The first one is the style of small towns in Europe and the style of streets in Japan. I want to set the shops and parks close, and there are narrow roads, so that the story can be unfolded easily. So I tentatively choose one of these two as the place where the story takes place. Second, the story revolves around a sad stray puppy, so blue is set as the emotional tone. In the following pictures, I searched for a large Japanese-style street or a more traditional old European street town as an emotional version of the picture, as a reference for architectural style and color reference.

Finally, because the story has a warm ending. Choose classic orange as the mood for the second half of the story. Among them, in order to reflect the change of the puppy’s inner emotions through the environment, falling snow and orange flickering lights, dim and warmer street lights reflect this emotion, which forms a contrast with the previous blue and black street colors. Or, another kind of picture can be used to express this kind of mood, the street scene after the rain, the sunshine, and the lively and warm atmosphere formed under the shade of the street trees, which is a metaphor for the acceptance of the new family. The design of the emotional version is very useful for my story. I can imagine the development of the story in this environment, because the color can feel the change of the content of the story.

The task for this term is to create three ideas and choose one from which to produce a previs.

Before starting previs, I learned some of the noun about concepts of animation.

• Mise En Scene/ Camera animation Rule of third, camera lenses, sets/props, character designs, lighting, camera types; handheld/crane/static. Types of shots; Establishing, mid, close up etc.
• Mise En Scene: Mise En Scene is a general word in film. It’s a collection of on-camera illustration. The content of the presenting includes the scenes, characters, props, costumes, lighting, and the effects of camera shots.
• Camera animation: The motion of the camera. There are up and down, around, push, pull, shake, shift and other different operation of camera. These modes of camera operation present different visual effects, and different implications.
• Rule of third/ Golden Ratio: Divide the picture into the following form, place the characters and objects are intended to highlight on the dividing line, and people’s eyes will naturally focus on this focal point. It also makes the picture look more comfortable because the characters and background are evenly distributed and balanced.

• Camera Lenses: Different lengths lens take on different effects. The length of a long lens can be used to shoot faces or other close-ups shot. Short shots can be used to take full shots or establish shots, often accompanied by lens distortion, such as making the scene appear larger and boarder.
• Props &Sets: The design of props & sets is an important part of setting and includes a lot of items, such as props, costumes, hair, makeup, etc. These are designed to serve the story and important information of the plot. But it’s important to note that items are meant to convey key information, not the more items the better.
• Character designs: As key to the content of the story, the character needs to be considered in terms of dress, appearance, facial expression, personality, mood, etc. The character’s characteristic can be conveyed to the audience laterally by designing the character’s actions.
• Camera types: handheld/crane/static
• • Previs& Postvis: pre-visialization and post-visialization including rough shots, character actions, timing, and scene design to show the content of the story. Such visualization is more conducive to communicating ideas with collaborators. After shooting the action, the special effects or three-dimensional models to be used are roughly cut together with the film, which can also save costs and convey effective information.

Knowing these nouns helps me with previs. Over the next ten weeks, I will come up with three ideas and choose one of them as previs, a story I am most interested in.

About First Idea

About the first idea. I am very interested in the topic of pets. I have a pet, a stray dog ​​my family picked up in the park. Because too many young people buy a puppy as a pet but often abandon it because they don’t have a stable home or job. Therefore, you can see puppies that are abandoned for some reason in the city. Because of these poor stray dogs, I wanted to create a story for them.

Because I consider that my original story text has too much content, I may not be able to finish it in the limited time, so I’m just using it as an entry point for my new story. Then I made a simpler story script:

The dog was lost on his way when he was attracted by a customer coming out of a bakery. As the man was returning to the car, the dog jumped in. The man smiled happily and looked back at the dog. However, the dog was not accepted by the man’s family for some reason, and finally the family opened their hands and accepted the dog as their family.

And I did three scene as start:

The significance of making these three scenes is that after I understand the function of the above concepts.

I used knowledges to make an attempt on the my scenes,such as rule of thirds or other layout.

For example, I divided the dog and the human into the left and right parts of the picture, and adjust the picture to a lower angle to better simulate the dog’s perspective.

In addition, I simply tried to arrange some long objects, doors or buildings, and flowers and plants in front of the door. This provides a split layout for images. This makes the picture look less monotonous.