How to create meaningful staging and acting at the storyboard and animatic phase
The animatic, or story reel, is an important phase of production. The idea behind an animatic is to convey a lot with a little. Despite their lack of polish, color, and shading, they determine the pacing of the entire movie and serve as a pose guide for animators.
A story artist is the one who creates storyboards for all of the director's shots. For this sequence, Floyd walks into the area and notices a red, pulsating object that seems to activate due to his presence. Now, our main character Floyd is still establishing himself in this new environment, so he's cautious and on guard, but his curious and explorative nature is also present.
Therefore, we want a shot that places a focus on both the environment, the object of interest, and the character in question.
Lines created in the composition stress object importance. Notice that there is always an implied line created by the character's gaze. What is that glowing red object on the floor that has Floyd on guard? By creating an environment like this, the overriding area of interest is clear.
After several revisions, the final sequence reads well. Let's break it down!
First - Establish the environment!
Wide angle shots are great for establishing the set. You may have seen it before.
It's also a nice rule of thumb to keep objects of interest near the thirds. What are the thirds? Split your shot twice vertically and twice horizontally and you'll see them. The human eye dislikes looking too close to the edge of a picture because we feel like we're gonna miss something, and having something dead center of a picture serves an entirely different purpose.
Next, Floyd notices the glowing red object flicker on the ground. For this, we want a range of key poses for the animators to go by.
Walks in, audience anticipates some kind of reaction.
On guard, grabs sword hilt. Diagonals lead to more dynamic pose.
Realizes there's no present threat. Subtle shift in body language, less tense.
Walks toward object curiously.
No shortcuts!
For the next shot, I had to create several poses and seperate sprites to accurately describe the action of picking up the object, examining it, and dusting it off to reveal alien text. All of my composing is accomplished through After Effects. Keying opacity between sprites has a nice feel and adds an extra layer of polish.
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