Changes to the Animatic

Above is my animatic which was shown during my pitch. I am very pleased with how it came out and I thought it illustrated well the idea that I had at the time. However, there were some changes that needed doing to it. Here I will address those changes.

Change #1: The Character

The first and most glaring change was the main concept of the character. As discussed in the previous post I was going to change that from a character to a machine. And so I did. These are some of the frames I had before of the character:

They were too innocent and cute. I instead traded them out for the idea of a machine. I wanted the machine to be simplistic. A few intricacies and hidden easter eggs but for the most part be simplistic. This was to make it easier to see and understand as sometimes it would be at a distance from the camera/viewer. I wanted to keep it straight forward. This is what I ended up creating:

As you can see it a very simplistic, minimalistic design that borrows from flat design (the latest craze of designing for the web right now). Although it is simplistic though I still added areas for intricacy and flair to take place. Smoke will protrude from the chimney, paper will print from the right hand slot, the lever will move, glowing text will write across the little screen in the bottom left and a light will flash on the siren in the top right.

Change #2: The TV

This wasn't mentioned in the pitch but was something I was meaning to change. The TV I created for the animatic was a very simplistic design that was just two cubes textured differently. It was too basic for my liking and was immediately obvious it was a TV. I changed it slightly adding more cubes and changing some of the texture. It went from this:

To this: (Ignore the lamp, I'm getting to that!)

I think it's a much more naturalistic looking TV that not only is more aesthetically pleasing but also more instantaneously recognisable as a TV. You can also see the subtle darkening I did to the scene as a whole. This was a stylistic choice again not brought up in the pitch but I thought had a more sophisticated, suave look to it.

Change #3: The Lamp

Yes you've already seen it but heres where I get to explain it! For this all I wanted to do was create more of a sense of depth. For this I wanted an object that would sit in the background behind the TV. I could then use Cinema 4D's relatively recent and stunningly beautiful depth of field renderer to create a physical camera and blur it on the closer shots:

Source: http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/tutorials/how-to-use-the-new-depth-of-field-in-cinema-4d-r13/

Source: http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/tutorials/how-to-use-the-new-depth-of-field-in-cinema-4d-r13/

Both of these images are rendered straight from Cinema 4D without going through any external dog renderers like Frischluft etc. If you know anything about 3D or moving images that is seriously impressive. Anyway! I knew Cinema 4D had the power to create depth I just needed a model of something in the background to work from. For this I used Turbosquid:

Source: www.turbosquid.com

This is a online store where people can buy and submit 3D models to work in a wide array of (if not all) 3D rendering programs. Originally I didn't know what to look for. I knew I wanted some kind of furniture but I wasn't sure what exactly. A desk maybe? A chair? After some brainstorming I found the lamp you have just seen. I really liked the shape of it as the legs would create some really interesting and aesthetically pleasing bokeh. I could also use it to add to the storyline as the TV could power up the lamp adding more weight to the "not only wastes energy" line.

I got it off the site, pulled it into cinema, positioned and textured it, set the cameras up at f/1.0 and captured the images and here are some before and afters:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

You can see a big difference in the images in that there is a far better sense of depth and realism. I am really happy with how this came out!

Change #4: The Intro

This is a very minor change again not picked up on in the pitch but something I felt needed changing. The opening video the character is watching is one I made over the summer. It is a little animation I made in Flash. The only shot I had long enough to include (that didn't contain profane language or gore) didn't make much sense and was a little intense and abrupt. I changed it to a short film I made a year or two ago about zombies as there's more of a story and it is a little more grounded (which sounds strange but I think is true).