Students Say- STORYBOARDS……..not again

Ok, a new phase is taking over. We thought the storyboarding for SHADE is done. Right? We were wrong. Not completely but still uncomfortably to some extent.

There are different ways and methods and styles and approach and intentions and necessities (ok too many ‘ands’…sorry.) for storyboarding. A storyboard (ahh… such a long word. Would it be ok if we call it Sboard?) For a film will be drawn differently than a Sboard for a 21 min animated series. Similarly there is a huge difference between the Sboard for a live action film and for an animated film. Many amateurs think that it is the same thing (as did we.)

Sboards for film are normally shot by shot representation of the scenes. They are not often too detailed. The flow and what is going to happen in the shots is illustrated but not how it happens. It is left for the direction or the actors to perform.

In animation though, Sboards are very well detailed showing all the scenes and the motion or action in the scene. The actual animation is described in each shot to clarify the story, drawing sometimes the major key frames of animation. (man! Its too detailed….) The simple reason for this is that you cannot take any risks for a reshoot in animation, while there can be hundreds of takes in a live action film. Thus the cost & the amount of work make it unaffordable. You have to be sure that your film is ready lock, stock and barrel on the paper first so that you don’t have to think over and try on the production.

So the new phase is simply that we are going to break up the shots from our Sboard and try to draw the performance in it because we had been under the impression that the Sboard we drew (which were a shot by shot progression like live action) would be enough for our short film. But with the alarm clock sounded by our teacher, woke us up to our mistake.

I think that the way you draw the Sboard should highly depend upon what is your film’s requirement. (And believe me I am perfectly right) you should carve your style yourself as you know (hopefully) what justifies your film.

We’ll get back with the breakups and some expression sheets later. See ya!

This is an excerpt of the story progression we had designed.













Id Animation & Arts

Director Speak

It is one of those moments, you have done all the work, and at one particular stage for an un-none reason you don’t know what to do next. We are in that position at the present.

We have finished maybe 50% of the post production work on ‘shade’, and we have reached a stage that we have enough material to come to a decision. But abundance of material also brings its own problems. We have enough designs for the look & feel of the film but we are finding it difficult to come down to one to move ahead.

Thou this isn’t a new experience to me, but for all the people working on the short, it is something they have to face & find a solution. It is part of the learning experience.

When last we were working on the clay animated film, most of the present team was present, but then it was different. They were given a set of guideline or call it parameters to work with. Not so this time, now they have to first build the guidelines themselves & follow it as they proceed.

To those who are new to film making, particularly to animation film making I will try to explain in a simple manner.

At the present, we all are working on the planning stage of this short film. This stage is also call Pre-Production; it is a stage before a film goes into production. It is now when most of the planning which includes, the Ideation, Script Writing, Story boarding of the various shots, Animatics to determine the timing & flow of the film is done.

We have worked out the story & the script, which we will be up loading on a later date.

We are experimenting with the look & feel of the short to find a design fitting the theme of our story. For this we studied many short films before we zeroed down to 8 films. These 8 films would act as our guide & inspiration.

I have to clarify here that these 8 films will help us understand what & how we can go about making our film. None of these films will be copied in any format, be it the visual designs or the shots or the narrative.

There are many reasons the primary reason is that our story & theme is different than all these 8 film, & and the other major reason is we want to create an original piece of work, even if it is flawed.

With this I will conclude this post. If there are any queries about the film or any other issue please feel free to contact us. It is our aim to be make this film a learning experience to us as well as every one else who wants to do so.

Id Animation & Arts