Since the story had been at the back of my mind for a few weeks, most of the work was already done for me - I just had to spend a little more time producing original character names and considering how the narrative might lie upon the illustrations.
Coming up with a name for the main character was quite tricky; I knew he was going to be a bad guy by the end of the narrative so I needed a name that would fit his transition. I Google'd a few sources and compiled a list of character names from Diablo (game), Lord of the Rings (movie) and a book I'm currently reading, Legend by David Gemmell.
The list showed quite clearly the differences between good and evil character names, also races. There are quite a lot of generic traits and styles within the fantasy genre so I decided to play it safe and abide by a few of their rules. From my list, I scanned through all the names and sounds I thought might fit my character, then made a few of my own until I had one I thought was original enough to use myself.
Happy with the progress I'd made, I considered how the pace might change throughout the narrative and planned for it to follow the slow-fast-slow system. When I read the narrative back to myself at the pace I expected it to take, it took about 1 minute 30 secs, so I knew I would be well within the time limit.
I assumed that each line of narrative would require 1 illustration, so I began to plan for 8 in total, with another 2 or 3 flash-images to help maintain the pace during the fast section.
Having already drawn up 2 sketches that fuelled my inspiration in the first place, I thought that these would work well alongside the story, so kept them in as 2 of the preliminary illustrations. As for the rest, I did a lot more drawing to see if I could come up with interesting compositions for the others.
Several sketches later and I was getting some solid ideas to use as a foundation. I pasted them all together and began thinking about the motion I could get the camera to take throughout each scene. As I had been reworking each sketch earlier, I'd been giving the camera work a lot of thought, so already had a good idea of what I was aiming for here, however this was still a very experimental stage so I couldn't be sure if my plans would be successful or not until the Animatic was produced.
Adding the intended camera motions to the storyboard, plus giving an idea of how the narrative would be integrated, I used this as a guide to make a quick animation test. When drawing up the storyboard I'd been careful to work at a large enough resolution and keep layers separate so that I could pull the file straight into After Effects ready for animating.
I just followed my storyboard guide for this part, sticking to the same process as in my earlier experiments: turn each layer into 3D space and animate a camera within it. Pre-composing each shot, I edited them all together and tested the flow of the animation.
It seemed to flow well enough, although the lack of voice over makes it a bit unclear how well the narrative will fit the animation, so I'll need to get a recording quickly. Once I get that sorted out I'll hopefully be able to tie it together pretty well.
There are 2 or 3 shots that I'd like to change as I don't think they're dynamic enough for the result I'm after, but other than that I'm semi-happy with the result. At least the Animatic has made it quite clear what areas need refinement or re-working.
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