Story frames

I'm in the final planning stages for something I'm shooting next week, here's a peak at random frames from storyboards I've drawn to help with production.

Storyboarding has always been a standard, essential part of my process as an animator. Increasingly with live action shoots I find it helps to work things out in advance by boarding sequences as I would on an animated project.



The main difference is that I don't go into performances as much as I do with animation boards. That's what the actors bring on shoot day. The main purpose for live action boards is for me to figure out coverage - ie how many shots I need to tell the story, the type of shots that work best to create the feeling I want and then from a purely practical point; simply to figure out how to stage things interestingly without confusing the audience.

That last point is particularly relevant when staging a conversation between several characters in one room.



Any story artist will tell you that storyboards aren't meant to be pretty. They're functional pieces of visual reference designed to provide clear staging and direction to help tell your story. The process can be so iterative, it's best to keep things simple and free of detail. I scrapped four rounds of boards (about a hundred different drawings each time) before settling on the final configuration.



I have Sherm Cohen to thank for his terrific guidance on storyboarding - I've learned a tonne from this guy over the years. He's also a top bloke to hang out with in person.

Check out Sherm's blog Cartoon Snap and his rather excellent Storyboard Secrets DVD box set - an essential crash course for all aspiring or even established story artists. Film-makers, cartoonists and other visual storytellers would do well to check it out too. Follow Sherm on twitter for more storyboard goodies!

Thuggee Life micro animation production blog pt. 2 - Story Reel / Animatic

So, I'm now back home after a long but thoroughly enjoyable day out and have just taken a look at the animatic I threw together this morning. Such a gap in time is usually a good thing because it enables you to review things with a fresh eye. I said in my previous post that this animatic was a real rush job - sure enough on second viewing it's pretty clear just how rough around the edges it is! To be fair, it would be in much worse condition had I not taken it through the (brief) development stage.

As it stands, I think it's still a fun piece. Judge for yourself:

Either way, it'll just have to do. If I want to meet my deadline, it is imperative I move on to the next stage - drawing layouts.

Thuggee Life micro animation production blog pt. 1 - The Idea

Earlier this evening I decided to challenge myself to create an animated cartoon - from concept to completion - in one week. Starting today (well, 6pm Saturday evening to be precise) I have 7 days to:

1. create an idea from scratch
2. develop that idea into some form of narrative
3. take it through pre-production (storyboard, animatic, layout, design)
4. break down all the shots for animation
5. plan that animation
6. animate it
7. clean up and finalise the animation
8. add colour
9. put some music/sfx or voice work in
10. deliver it on deadline! (in this case upload it to vimeo)

A tall order, no doubt about it. Here's what I've managed to do so far:

THE IDEA

After a bit of pondering and chatting to my other half I came up with several ideas, the one I've chosen is a scene inspired by characters from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - one of my favourite films. I love that film coz it's so ridiculously ott. Anyway, the scene I came up with is essentially a one note gag involving two members of the Thuggee cult. The first thing I did was scamp out the idea in my pocket notebook:

(note: the frames read in columns top to bottom)



Drawn in a couple of minutes, scamping an idea out like this helps me see whether it is likely to work. If it doesn't work, at least I won't wasted too much time. Fortunately I felt this had potential but looking at the frames I realised a lot needed reworking (screen direction, choice of shots and framing are some glaring examples).

STORY THUMBNAILS

So I made another pass, this time thumbnailing with more thought to how things would work on screen:

(note: these frames read in rows left to right)

In this second attempt I was starting to flesh things out - especially with the characters themselves. Once I'd drawn these thumbnails and looked at how the action played out, I knew I needed to explore the characters a little more - particularly how their design could add to the story and help show their personalities on screen. So I made some very loose sketches exploring exactly that:

CHARACTER SKETCHES



Although I only spent half an hour on them, these character sketches really helped me develop the personalities, which in turn helped me find the story beats I was looking for. It's a chicken and egg thing with story thumbnails and character sketches. It's always more effective to design characters that are doing something, or saying something or responding to something. As you can see from the ones I've marked with a red asterisk, drawing poses for a specific story purpose yields the best results.

STORYBOARD

Now armed with the character sketches and thumbnails as reference, I took a crack the storyboard - this time trying to nail all the staging, shots, story beats and key performance elements:

(note: these frames read in rows left to right)

Some of these storyboard frames could potentially serve as my thumbnails for character animation. We'll see if that's the case once I get to animating stuff.

I've decided to accept this as my final storyboard. I think the staging is pretty clear and story is engaging enough, besides, I'm out of time, got to move on to the next stage: the animatic!

I'm going to blog my progress for the next 7 days.....wish me luck!

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(click for 1080p size)

A new show reel!

I just compiled a new show reel of highlights from my recent work as a Story Artist, Character Designer, Concept Artist and Cinematographer. I'm still animating, but this year I got hired to do a lot of pre-production work on various different projects.

As any hired gun in pre-production will tell you, there can be a rather long wait before you get to share any of your work with the public - because you invariably have to wait for the production itself to wrap up and get released before you can show any of your pre-production stuff.

Fortunately for me, four of the projects I got involved with this year have now been cleared. So, check out the reel below along with a breakdown of its contents and credits:

2010 Show reel of Rafi Nizam

Story Artist, Character Designer, Art Director, Concept Artist.

Show reel: Rafi Nizam - Story Artist, Character Designer, Art Director, Concept Artist fromRafianimates on Vimeo.

A breakdown of the contents of the show reel in the order they appear:

1. STORYBOARD drawings and ANIMATIC by Rafi Nizam
Narrator and character voices by Fiona Lesley
Produced by House of Chooch
Project Title: Stickwad and Titch
Client: House of Chooch

2. CINEMATOGRAPHY and ART DIRECTION by Rafi Nizam
Actors: Jamie Zubairi and Fiona Lesley
Music by osymyso
Project Title: London Tog
Client: House of Chooch

3. STORYBOARD illustrations and ANIMATIC created by Rafi Nizam
Narrated by Fiona Lesley
Voices by Danny Robins and Fiona Lesley
Written by Rafi Nizam and Sharon Drysdale
Designed, Directed & Illustrated by Rafi Nizam
Produced by Eagle Contracting
Project Title: IT Man & Eagle
Client: Eagle Consulting

4. CHARACTER DESIGNS by Rafi Nizam
Illustrated by Rafi Nizam
Produced by King Bee Entertainment
Project Title: Elizabeth Avenue
Client: King Bee Entertainment
Elizabeth Avenue created by Amanda Evans

Learning to Fly

It's halloween this Sunday, so here's a four page comic, illustrated by me with words by Fiona Buck, about a witchling and her companions Stickwad and Titch:

You can view these pages much larger on my website: http://www.rafianimates.co.uk/