I've worked on the animatic, taking the feedback I got into consideration. I feel like this one is better and makes more sense (no sound/music by the way) with some added transitions between scenes. After re watching it it feels way too fast but that's something to consider when I actually start animating.
While doing that, I had some fun with environment thumbnails:
And a little asset in maya - inspired by the lower left thumbnail. You can have a look around it in sketchfab. I also animated the texture as I wanted some movement in it, making them look like a sort of a window in space:
Hi Vlad - apologies for dropping by so late in the game; okay, for me, there's still a lack of 'close-up & thinking/looking/feeling' shots - i.e. we're not invited to identify with your character's thoughts and feelings via shot choice. I don't know what your intentions are in terms of 'facial animations' (as I'm pretty sure your character doesn't have expressions in the traditional sense) but when your character is, for example, considering the stepping stones across the lake, I'd like to see a construction of shots that goes something like - 1) character arrives in new scene - master shot, which gives the audience info about spatial relations etc, 2) an over the shoulder shot, which keeps your character in frame, but we're now looking as he is looking across the water 3) cut to close-up of character - we're looking at his face, we're being asked to imagine the character's thoughts at this new challenge 4) POV shot of the stepping stones, with a slight tracking towards the horizon by the camera to tell us that the character is thinking about the journey ahead 5) cut back to a wide-shot reminding the viewer of the character's relationship to the distance across the stones and his goal (i.e. he's on the left, the goal = the right of the screen) 6) cut to a close-up of his foot stepping on the the first stone... For me, this would be much more involving and engaging, as we're being made to have the same sequence of thoughts as your character is - as opposed to what you've got now, which is a kind of perennial distance - a sort of detached watching experience.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing I suggest you explore is looking at how you might make the sense of travel and distance more dynamic too by thinking about using your environment construction as a film-editing device via wipe-cuts. I've just given Ryan some similar advice as he too has a character that travels/walks and I think this can actually be 'deadspace' for audiences: two examples of use of wipe cuts - the most famous arguably as seen in Jaws, and then how CAA grad Emily Clarkson used it to good effect in Morrigan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXsvIt_GI78
https://youtu.be/9vrQIS0C5Xw
Because you've got rock-formations and monoliths etc, I think you could use the parallaxing of this components to really lend further dynamism to the sense of your character's journey - you can likewise use this technique to elide the moments when your character transforms (which I think is your intention still?), so imagine a tracking shot where your character is mid-ground, and in the foreground/background there are your monoliths, as the camera tracks left to right, the foreground monolith moves to obscure the shot, and you use that 'wipe' to transition us onto another shot very smoothly; another use might be that we see version 2 of your character move behind a monolith as the parallax obscures him, and then the next shot shows your character transformed into version 3, all done simply and effectively.
Anyway - short version - my advice would be to think much more conceptually about what the camera placement is 'giving' you (and therefore us) in terms of further narrating/under-pinning your character's 'coming-to-be'.