Experimentation
Sorting out the story
The first step to creating my story was to go step by step in a storytelling process. I first wrote down my story in a block of text and then to help organize its parts into cohesive story arcs using a three act structure template which shows the build ups and climaxes.
I also did a "5 Drawings" exercise which works to highlight the major parts of the story with visuals. This really helped to sort out my story major parts. It also helped identify key visual frames from my Animatic. The drawings were done quickly and the final image of the friends was a placeholder for the other toy characters that appear near the end. I still need to choose specifically which toys they will be.
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Script Writing
After sorting out the structure, I sat down to write a proper script of the whole story including directions about how I want the camera to move or what shot is being used. I used a online program called CeltX that allows users to create scripts that look professional with the iconic typewriter font and structure tools that allow me to differentiate actions with settings and descriptions. I wrote out a version of my story and from there I started to create a rough storyboard of my scripts.
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I first tried to do my first rough draft in PanelForge to familiarize myself with it. I also got advice from my classmate Joe on how to work certain parts of PanelForge which aren't spoken about on PanelForge's FAQ pages.
Storyboarding
However when I was drawing on PanelForge I found that I took too much time trying to make it look clean and good that I ended up not getting as many panels done as I wanted. And after a talk with my tutor, we decided that to let my creative ideas flow and translate easier, I should take a pause on PanelForge and use physical Post Its to draw my story out, so that I wouldn't have to worry about making it look perfect, they could be rough and they were quicker to scribble out. I also found it nice that I could just switch around, take away, or add post its if I felt the need to. It was pretty liberating and seeing them physically on a wall helped with progressing. Eventually I had all my story done on post its on the wall and I just had to put it together into a video to edit the timing of it.
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Character Design
One of the things I have to design is the friends that Lele is going to meet. Since Lele and her family is based on the Mexican ragdolls, there's not much alterations to be done other than simplifying the designs so they are easier to draw repeatedly. But I now have to think about what other toy characters I can include. I can base the designs off of the personalities I am thinking about. I'm gonna use my drawing program Clip Paint Studio to do all the designing. It has a big range of tools for me to use so its the most ideal drawing program.
The first character I thought of was a cuddly bear. A stuffed teddy bear is such a classic children's toy so I thought it would be a perfect character to include in the story. I imagined this character to be a big friendly giant who is quite clumsy but very much loving. For all the toy designs I played around with using shape language to really give them a unique appearance that showcases their personalities. I used a combo of squarish and round shapes to come up with some ideas. But I felt very attached to the large stature bear with a smaller head. These ideas will also translate to his human version which will make a appearance at the end of the Animatic.
I wanted a clown character in the line up of friends because I thought that it would be a fun and interesting character to design. I did have to be careful because it was a slippery slope to create a clown character that is scary. I spoke to some classmates and they find clowns scary so I had to make sure to not make the design too threatening. I liked the idea of a bulbous type clown with animated movements. I imagined them having a rubberhose like arms. I had inspiration of various types of clowns and characters. Like dolls and balance ball toys. Her human version is a wacky colourful counterpart with orange hair
Most classic friend groups always have the resident nerdy or geeky friend. That was me in my friend group, I thought that a representation of that geekiness was a robot toy character. It was very fun to design the robot because I had a lot of robots to look at for reference. I had a combo of western and Asian robots to look at. I wanted the robot to be a girl and I also played with some more shape language. I liked the round designs but I already had a clown with a bulbous shape. So I focused on more squarish designs to set her apart. In her human form, she would look geeky with big glasses to mirror the big eyes of the robot design.
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Then I decided on having a Bunny character so that I could introduce a more shy and subdued personality. I was thinking of basing her on the bashful bunny plushies which would reflect the shy personality I choose for her. I also gathered reference images of other bunny plushies to see if I could combine some details together. When designing the human version, I was going to giver her longer hair that frames her face along with low pigtails which will slowly become more higher as she feels happier with her friends.
Animatic Passes
After drawing up the rough storyboard on post it notes, I put it into Premiere Pro so I could work out the timing of the story. Then I would show it to my tutor so he could offer me some advice on what I could change. Below is the first pass of my rough Animatic
This first pass of the Animatic needed some adjustments and additions to really help the story and timing. The original PanelForge storyboard had a very brief and ineffective goodbye scene between Lele and her parents. So I expanded upon it in this first pass to make it more emotional. The hugs are more meaningful. Previously when I was on the post its stage, the scene where Lele meets her friends was really brief and it lacked that same emotional connection that the first version of the goodbye scene didn't have. So in this first pass I added on to, by introducing Clown and Bunny by showing their reactions first and then having them join the conversation later on. After getting feedback from my teacher, I realised that I should ease in more into the intro scene of Lele arriving at her accommodation rather than jump straight into her in her room.
This second pass expands on Lele's arrival to her accommodation by giving her another obstacle to overcome, which is crossing the busy streets of London. I also adjusted Clown and Lele's faces when they first meet, before it looked a bit sinister, like Clown was being mean to Lele or something. So I gave Clown a softer eye shape and gave Lele a smile.
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I got my tutor to look at it again and mentioned some changes that I will be carrying onto the final version. Suggestions like different scene transitions and some establishing shots of the traffic Lele is going to cross