After the storyboard process I scanned all of the artwork in. By creating a template for the storyboard I was able to generate an animatic pretty quickly (a couple days) by using the alt replace option in Adobe After Effects. The purpose of the animatic is to make sure that camera angles make sense, there aren’t any big chunks missing from the story and also to make sure the story flows properly.
It is important to have other people take a look at the animatic and for you to also distance yourself from it as well. being the creator I know how these characters will turn out over a period of time but did I do my job and convey all of the necessary information for th audience to bridge that gap as well or is it going to seem fragmented?
Sure enough, during this process dialogue gets adjusted, artwork can get altered and frames or scenes can get added, removed or shifted around. It is important to constantly be watching the piece and to make sure to modify it as needed as we go. Otherwise you will end up with revisions to the entire piece and you may find that you could have skipped some stuff and it would have saved you the time it took to create it.
The next post will go more in depth on this process.