06 // Establishing A Workflow (pt.01)

When it came to figuring out the most efficient workflow for this kind of project, I gave quite a lot of thought to the steps I would be taking to produce the final product, and worked backward from there. I'd already established that my artwork style would work alright for this type of animation, so there wasn't too much to worry about that.

I've worked on a solo project of this scale before at college, where I followed a workflow that looked a little like this: concept art > design > storyboard > 3D modelling > animating > rendering > sound production > editing. I wasn't too intimidated by this project to begin with, although I realised the importance of having a steady, planned workflow, as things can get a little hairy in places.

This is the college project animation that I produced, if it's of any interest:

I wanted to present a lot of dynamic shots in that video, and have good variety in camera work and compositions - much like I'm doing now - but there's definitely a degree of flexibility when working with 3D software: it's a little more forgiving and makes it possible to correct shots and angles on the fly. On the other hand, with illustrations like I'm working with now, if I decide a particular shot isn't working out I need to get back to the storyboard then redraw that whole shot from scratch - as I did later on in the parallax project. So I'm very aware of the possible extra man-hours required of illustration-based animations. However I've learnt now that if it's planned well enough in the early stages, the need to go back and make any changes/corrections should be minimised.

I figured that in order to get a good, clean start to my parallax project, I'd have to get a narrative planned out before beginning work on the storyboard. After a day or so of scribbling down ideas and sketches I finally had something to work with. The important thing was to choose a theme and characters that would keep me interested throughout, which would help me to stay engaged and work faster and harder. So I chose the Fantasy genre, with a story about knights and demons.

This was my first narrative draft:

When I wrote this up, I was trying to plan ahead and take into account the pace changes that I'd seen in several of the clips I had studied from earlier.

From there I went on to draw up a storyboard, with some of the sketches I'd been working on providing me with inspiration. I'd never been great with storyboards in the past, so I sought a little help with technique and came across this post from Videomaker.com, which made things go a lot smoother.

I was also referring to Setting the Scene (MacLean) which is invaluable with several sections devoted to storyboarding, scene layouts and animation planning.

This is the first storyboard I created:

In hindsight I wish I'd established more of a concept art stage beforehand; my character designs were based off an image I'd drawn a couple of months prior so I was able to draw up a few alternate designs easily enough, but the demon designs I was having to make on the fly for the storyboard, so there was a bit of lag there and the final result probably suffered quite a bit.

I'd made sure to keep all the important layers seperate in each panel of the storyboard so that I could quickly get them into After Effects to edit together an animatic. This would be the first test for flow and timing, so it was a major step in the project.

Here's the first draft of the animatic:

As soon as I had the animatic playing, there were a few points I noticed would need refinement. This was to be shown to the class for group feedback, so I hoped that any errors I'd missed would be brought to my attention.