I don’t think my video reference is particularly amazing. At least, if nothing else, it does at least help to convey what the heck is going (something that a few people have struggled with in the storyboard/animatic phase), but it’s lacking a bit of character at the moment. I may shoot some more or I may just try and stay wary of the fact that the acting choices need more “oompf”.

I did do a few pose sketches to see if I could come up with some appealing shapes, lines of action and add a little more ‘character’ to each of the characters:

One of the main things I wanted to address from last week was the slight confusion most people seemed to suffer from when the camera cuts up close to the mechanic, so I addressed that in an updated storyboard.

And here’s the scene layout I did as a result of that:

It’s still far from perfect, but it’s getting there. I should point out that the awful camera move did not see any finesse at all, it is completely linear. Even so, I second-guessed what Mario would say about it in my critique and I’ve already taken it out of the next iteration!

This is what Mario had to say:

Layout

Get rid of the moving camera shot. Re-frame the action by pulling the camera back a bit such that we can see everything without having to move.

Don’t worry about the establishing shots for now. Take the first shot, pull the camera back a bit and slowly truck in so that we have an establishing shot without greatly extending the animation.

Consider adding a cut that re-frames the action on the guy and the mechanic after the girl has finished her line. That will make it clear to the audience that we’re only concerned with the two characters on-screen from now on and it will reduce the amount of animation to do.

In the last shot, don’t change the camera angle; go back to the existing shot that the audience has already seen and is comfortable with.

Overall

Pull the cameras back a bit, they all feel a little close.

B

It’s been a tough week, from both a workload and motivational point of view. Video reference tends to stress me out and takes a very long time to get right (it doesn’t help that my parents are renovating their house, so I had no space to actually film anything!). Once you think you might have something you like, you need to spend bloody ages editing it and chopping it all together. On top of that we had to do additional sketches and the layout with some rough blocking poses.

Ugh. Tired.

In my critique, Mario had a few misgivings about the shot; mainly that it’s quite ambitious, there are three characters and it’s reasonably complex in terms of cuts and camera angles. Overall though, he was happy with the work I’ve produced this week, he especially like the characters/costumes I’d come up with:

A

A very busy week, but it was definitely worth it! Time to move onto blocking and video reference!