With a preliminary animatic and script complete, something just was not clicking. The story was there, the beats were hitting... but it just wasn't quite locking into place. Story is the most integral and important part of this entire process, and I am simply not willing to sacrifice it. After receiving great feedback from Trixy (my advisor), as well as my co-writers and friends... I have started a journey to create an ANIMATIC V2!
In order to do this, I rewrote the script and "re-thumbnailed" the entirety of my film traditionally on paper. I find that thumbnailing on paper allows me to be more expressive and carefree. Turning on Photoshop immediately makes me want to create polished art, which gets in the way of tapping into the more abstract ideas.
As such, you can view the entire film in "thumbnail-form" right here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19FKxSVbpK1sZOjygutB9GQxXbtOnHUZi?usp=sharing
With these thumbnails, I truly think the story is beginning to lock into place and feels satisfying. Everything ties together more nicely, it has creative transitions and utilizes the medium better, and Evan isn't a complete unlikable jerk and is more relatable.
I need the next week to polish up the thumbnails and basically do draw-overs, and I should have a greatly enhanced animatic by next week! Unfortunately, this is as much as I could do within a week's time. However... great progress!
For A2, I have created a production schedule/budget that I believe should hold up from now on! I can't move forward with specific dates for each scene because I simply don't have enough information to do that. Once ANIMATIC V2 is 100% complete, I will be able to complete that very quickly.
A2 can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M-jyi8sWSAqWL9oy1vnC7_EA23W4TKuY90KUffdMmt4/edit?usp=sharing
(On top of this film, I am running a web-series that has its next episode very firmly into production... so definitely a lot going on! Thought I'd post a sneak peek.)
From my experience working on this web-series I have learned an immense amount of information on creating an animated production, sticking to a schedule, being diligent, and remaining on task. I am not at all worried about this film, but I am very aware that things will constantly change so I will not be rigid! Excited for the future.
~Adam