Writing, Storyboarding, Animation, Sound Design and Video Editing
'Ouija Bored' Team Member for Student Animated Film
During my third year of University, I worked alongside a small group of students to produce the short animated film 'Ouija Bored'. This project taught me a lot about storyboarding and I learned a lot about staging and layout, so I wanted to present my journey of storyboarding and rough animation, along with the logistical side of the project as a team member.
This was the first animated project I worked on that was not my initial idea and that I did not direct, so it gave me a chance to grow from a different perspective .
Production Process
My Team Roles
While I started the production with the intension on being a key-animator and cleanup artist, my roles were expanded due to time constraints and team dynamic. Eventually, I became a general animator, taking on the majority of the rough animation and cleanup, both keying and inbetweening the shots. I did all of my rough animation in Adobe Animate, instead of TVPaint. I chose this route as I figured I have a much greater experience of the software, meaning I could rough out a shot much quicker than TVPaint, which I had yet to spend a considerable amount of time with. Nevertheless, when cleaning up and colouring the shots, I imported them into TVPaint, meaning that there was a consistent quality to the lines and colours, since the whole project was being cleaned up in the same program from everyone. This meant I embraced the speed of the experience I had in Adobe Animate, while still getting the new skills from learning TVPaint as I worked.
In addition, I took on the role of video editor, which was discussed at the start of the project, though I was appointed to be the head of sound design. In this, I was assigned to cutting up the audio that had been recorded for the voice acting, choosing the best takes, before editing them into the film. I spent a day going through the takes together and choosing which were the best for the film, and I cut them into our on-going rough cut of the film, which had been periodically updated since production had began.
Nevertheless, I felt that this gave us much better control over the production of the sound, especially given that some shots would have to be lip-synced. Furthermore, as production got into cleanup and colouring, I also gave myself the role of a colourist, colouring some shots as I went. One area of the production I did not involve myself in was layouts, since there was already 2 people on that job, meaning that there was an even split of key animators and layout artists.
Shot Table/Production Schedule
To the right, you can see the shot table that we have used during our production, we have colour-coded the individual shots that each of us have had to either rough animate, inbetween, cleanup etc.
A total of 88 shots were animated in the production period. Originally, we had 89, though 2 had to be cut due to time constraints, and 1 had to be added to bring more clarity to the action.
Out of the 88 shots, I rough animated and inbetweened 45 of them. In addition, I cleaned up 31 of them.
During the production process, we had a ‘Notes’ section, which provided a helpful space for both us and our tutors to give feedback on the individual shots, that way we could check off that we have addressed the critique before signing off on the shot.
This organisation allowed for a simple way to get through the production.
Shot List
In addition to the shot table, we also developed a list of all of the shots, each with a brief description on what occurs in the shot. This was mainly for the layout artists to know what perspective we are seeing things from, but also to help me as an animator make sure we are working on the correct shot. While we found this method to be helpful, we eventually found that using the shot table and referring back to the animatic was a more hands-on way of dealing with the shots, since we could literally see what they looked like. However, it did help to have a hard-copy of the shot list as a reference of where we started, since a digital version can obviously be altered over time.
During the process of the production, we tried to implement a set of deadlines on a separate document. We created a weekly roundup, where once a week we would meet to discuss what we have done for the project, showing off work to each-other and offering constructive criticism.
In addition, we had been and still are communicating over Facebook Messenger with works-in-progress versions of our files, so everyone can see the progress instantly and efficiently. This, in conjunction with the Google Drive that we regularly updated with files and documents related to our project, allowed us to have a unified and organised system to keep this project moving.