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00:00 An animatic is a storyboard that has motion.
00:06 Now you can use several different types of software to create an animatic.
00:10 You can use Flash, you can use Adobe After Effects, you can use Adobe Premiere, you can
00:17 use pretty much any application that has a timeline and allows you to import still images
00:23 and even QuickTime movies or AVI movies.
00:27 An animatic is simply a low-res, quick production version of your film.
00:35 The purpose of an animatic is to gauge your timing, to see whether you have to make edits,
00:40 to see whether you need to change things like lighting or whether you have to extend or
00:44 even cut scenes.
00:46 It's really good especially when you want to show the production crew what their film
00:50 is looking like and how it's coming along.
00:52 So the director can make his notes, the cinematographer can make his notes or her notes and that kind
00:57 of thing.
00:58 So it really is something that is going to give you a better idea of what you're going
01:02 to wind up with.
01:04 Now if you watch any of the making of featurettes that are pretty much standard on many Blu-rays
01:10 and DVDs these days, you can see animatics in many of them.
01:14 A good example of an animatic that I think is available is on the very first X-Men movie
01:20 DVD.
01:21 It might be on Blu-ray now I would imagine.
01:24 And there's a section where they have some pretty low res versions of the characters
01:30 and they're just going through the motions.
01:31 They're fighting, they're saving people but they look nowhere near like what the movie
01:36 looks like.
01:38 And once again it's just so that we can see the timing and we can see what's going to
01:41 go on.
01:42 Really good especially if you're going to do some kind of martial arts or some kind
01:45 of fight scene.
01:46 So you can see which angles are going to look good.
01:50 Animatics are very visual and you want to get the audience engaged.
01:55 So if you're doing something like a high speed car chase, you really want to plan it out
01:59 and get those angles right.
02:01 When should the close-ups of the tires appear?
02:03 When should we be behind the car?
02:05 When should two cars be next to each other as they try to knock each other off the road?
02:09 When should we have an aerial view?
02:10 And that kind of stuff.
02:12 And the reason I say all those different angles and shots is because sometimes you can go
02:15 too far.
02:17 And what looks good on paper looks horrible on film.
02:21 So you look at the animatic and you go, "What was I thinking?
02:23 It looks like a disco with cars.
02:24 There's too much stuff going on."
02:27 So this is a quick animatic I did for a client and I'm simply going to scrub through the
02:31 timeline to show you what it could look like.
02:33 So I'll go ahead and do that for you.
02:37 So we have this character and he's getting ready to go to school and I'll go ahead and
02:40 scrub.
02:42 He's thinking about getting his shoes for winning a contest and the bus is moving a
02:46 little bit.
02:47 He's on the bus, he gets tripped.
02:49 He's in school tinkering with some invention for a science fair.
02:53 He wins the science fair.
02:55 He's happy.
02:56 He's on the bus on the way home and he gets chased by a bunch of bullies.
03:00 So as you can see, it's just very simple.
03:03 It's not my artwork by the way.
03:04 It's somebody else's artwork and I worked on the animatics and helped bring this to
03:07 life so it's just a very quick way to do this.
03:10 I used Adobe Premiere and what I did was I took all the artwork here and I cut the pieces
03:15 up in Photoshop.
03:17 So I would take the arm, cut that off so I could animate it.
03:20 I take the eyes, cut those off and put them on their own layers so I can make them blink
03:24 and that kind of thing.
03:25 So once again, you could use any application that you're proficient in as long as you can
03:30 animate certain elements, you can add the voices of the actors, you can add music or
03:34 whatever you need to.
03:35 But that's just a quick overview of what an animatic is.
03:43 In this section of the tutorial, I want to share with you guys some of the tools you'll
03:49 need in your arsenal when you want to create a film.
03:53 Now this particular lesson is talking about concept.
03:57 Now the concept is going to be one of those tricky areas because in all honesty, the only
04:03 person who's going to be as in love with your ideas is the person you see in the mirror.
04:09 That's right, you.
04:10 Let me give you an example.
04:12 I created a comic book series in the 80s called Hamster Vice and they're animal cops.
04:18 We have a hamster, we have a German Shepherd, they have rockets, they have tanks, they have
04:22 all kinds of great stuff and they fight insect criminals.
04:27 That's right, people like Rumble Roach or the nefarious vampire Queen Mosquito who's
04:33 a mosquito.
04:34 So to me, as a college student, greatest idea of all time.
04:38 I loved it.
04:39 Fortunately for me, a lot of people liked it too and it was a pretty big hit.
04:43 So I really believed in it and I was able to sell it.
04:47 Now you may have ideas and you're going to bounce them off people and they're going to
04:51 say, "Hey, don't waste your time."
04:52 This is pretty important.
04:53 You're going to have to really fight for your dreams, guys.
04:56 You believe in it.
04:57 Some of your friends are going to believe in it but you're going to have to follow through
05:01 and make it happen.
05:02 That's really the best advice I can give you.
05:05 You know, don't let anybody shoot you out of the sky because once again, hamster vice
05:09 sounds insane.
05:10 I mean, animal cops versus criminal insects?
05:14 But you know, it lasted for a couple of years and it's still popular.
05:16 I'm still working on it.
05:17 So I'm doing more stuff with those guys now.
05:19 I have another character called Black Zero who's a mercenary ant.
05:23 I showed it at film festivals across the country.
05:25 People loved it.
05:26 He's a cool character.
05:27 You know, some of my other concepts, not so much.
05:30 I bounce the ideas off my wife.
05:32 She'll tell me if it sounds cool or if it sounds completely stupid.
05:36 So once again, it's up to me as the creative person to decide whether I think it's not
05:41 stupid or to continue on with it.
05:44 So this is a tricky area when it comes to concept.
05:47 So what makes a good concept?
05:50 Interesting characters.
05:52 Something else that's very important I think you guys have to do with your characters is
05:55 to remember that you want them to be relatable by the audience.
05:59 Give your characters problems.
06:02 They can't pay their bills.
06:04 They can't control their superpowers.
06:06 They have a problem at home.
06:08 They have a hard time holding down a job.
06:10 They may have no job.
06:12 They may be homeless.
06:13 There's all kinds of things that you have to give your characters.
06:16 Don't make them super for no reason.
06:19 Make them super but have them have vulnerabilities.
06:23 Don't let your superheroes or your good guys always win.
06:27 Think about the Power Rangers.
06:28 I did a couple of Power Rangers books back in the day believe it or not.
06:32 The Power Rangers if you watched it and yes I watched a whole bunch of Power Rangers until
06:36 somehow some way I started liking it.
06:40 But Power Rangers never win the first battle.
06:44 The kids transform into the characters.
06:46 They lose.
06:47 They get beat up pretty bad.
06:48 They go home, lick their wounds, think about what they did wrong, come back later and win
06:52 each episode.
06:53 It's a formula.
06:54 I know it's boring but it works.
06:57 Show your characters with vulnerabilities.
06:59 Let them get defeated every once in a while.
07:02 It gives a lot more interest and validity to the characters.
07:06 Give your characters a good reason for being the way they are.
07:10 For example, Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars.
07:14 A whole lot of wrong happened in Anakin's life that kind of led him to the dark side.
07:20 Now I'm not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it but you can understand the
07:25 path he took.
07:27 He was determined to prevent things from happening so he took the easiest road.
07:33 So give your characters good valid reasons for what happens to them and why those things
07:39 happen.
07:40 Just think it through.
07:41 Look at your own life.
07:42 Look at the lives of people around you and help and take those ideas and put them into
07:46 a package that will create some very good characters and great concepts.
07:55 Now all animation doesn't necessarily have speech in it but a script is still very helpful.
08:02 It's also extremely helpful of course if you do have actors giving you performances for
08:06 your animation.
08:08 Now I did a film a couple of years ago called Black Zero Mercenary Ant.
08:13 I did the voice of Zero and he talks kind of like this.
08:17 And I had a couple of other people help me out with that animation endeavor.
08:20 It was a really fun project and I did it primarily to take the film festivals and people really
08:25 enjoyed it.
08:26 I had a great time working on it.
08:28 So the script was very important for me and my cast.
08:33 Now this is a website that I want you guys to check out.
08:36 Celtics.com because this is script writing software that's completely and utterly free.
08:42 You heard me, free.
08:43 Now let me show you what it looks like.
08:46 This is a script I'm working on for my Kid Caramel book series and so far it's pretty
08:50 bad because I just did a very first draft and haven't really edited it yet.
08:55 But as you can see, as I write my script it will edit things for me.
08:59 And what I can do is I can select some text for example and you can see that it says scene
09:03 heading.
09:04 I can click in this text, it's action.
09:06 I can click here, character, here, dialogue and it knows what's going on.
09:13 And the beautiful thing is once I start to add characters, all I have to do is start
09:17 typing the first few letters of their name and it will know who to put there.
09:22 If I want to change anything, I just click in the area and go to the list and now it's
09:26 in action.
09:27 And I can put a character.
09:28 Notice the character goes over here.
09:31 I can put dialogue or I can just put it back the way it was.
09:34 So it's a really great application and it allows you to write your notes, allows you
09:38 to bring in images.
09:39 It's an extremely effective application and it's completely free once again.
09:43 So check it out.
09:44 It will be a great tool for you to use when you're creating your scripts for your films.
09:54 Characters are often seen by the creators in their own heads before anybody else does.
10:00 Whether you're an artist or not, somehow someway you know what the characters look like.
10:05 And you don't have to be a great artist either.
10:08 You can be just okay and still come up with an icon.
10:11 Let me give you a good example.
10:14 Clive Barker.
10:15 I think he's a decent artist but he's not like a super duper like Jim Lee.
10:20 But with his own sketches, he created the iconic character Pinhead.
10:26 Amazing character.
10:27 Love the character.
10:29 Awesome.
10:30 So he had the idea in his mind and he let it percolate for a couple of years and then
10:34 boom, now he's everywhere.
10:36 So let's talk about some sketch software that you might want to incorporate.
10:41 I use Photoshop to do my sketches.
10:44 I also use Corel Painter.
10:45 I also sketch on paper and scan it in.
10:49 And as a little trick you guys might want to use, if you have a phone capable of sending
10:53 yourself email with photographs attached, take pictures of your sketches and email them
10:59 to yourself.
11:00 That will bypass the scanner altogether.
11:02 I do that quite often.
11:04 So one of the things that's really important in the digital lifestyle is this guy, Layers.
11:12 Layers give you the ability to create a very rough sketch and then create a new layer on
11:17 top of it to refine it.
11:19 Let me give you an example.
11:21 I'm going to, first of all, double click to unlock this layer and I'm going to draw on
11:25 this layer here.
11:26 As a matter of fact, I'll draw on a brand new layer just to show you how it can work.
11:29 So I created a new layer by clicking down here on this icon.
11:33 And as a little plug, check out my Photoshop CS4 training at the Virtual Training Company
11:38 website to learn how to use this amazing and industry standard application.
11:42 All right, so I'm going to do a quick stroke like this just to get myself loosened up a
11:46 little bit, just to draw.
11:48 Then I'm going to grab the Marquee Tool, highlight it and delete all that stuff.
11:54 Now I'm going to grab my Brush Tool and as you can see here, I have a very low diameter
11:58 brush, 2 pixels.
11:59 And I'm simply going to start drawing one of my characters.
12:02 Now what you typically see a lot of people do is they start drawing really hard.
12:07 They start to add the muscles and they start to really sketch really quickly.
12:12 Here's an arm, for example, and they do all these kinds of stuff.
12:16 I don't recommend drawing this way because you've locked yourself in to a sketch without
12:21 even exploring.
12:22 Let me go ahead and get rid of that.
12:26 What a lot of people will tell you instead is to explore, experiment.
12:30 So start with rough shapes.
12:31 So here's my character's face.
12:35 And we'll just go ahead and put a neck.
12:36 We'll do some gestures like this.
12:38 So he's going to be leaning a little bit.
12:40 Here's the chest area.
12:41 And here's going to be the abdomen.
12:45 And there's going to be the arms, or the shoulders rather, and the biceps, and the forearms,
12:51 and the elbow.
12:52 And you've got the triceps and the back, if you can see it from that angle.
12:56 You're going to have your trapezius muscle right there.
13:00 And you're going to have traps, your trapezius muscle, or whatever that's called for guys.
13:04 Latissimus dorsi.
13:05 There we go.
13:06 Lats.
13:07 Latissimus dorsi.
13:08 You have your chest, which is the pectorals, pectoralis.
13:11 You got your deltoids.
13:12 You have three of those guys.
13:14 You have your anterior, interior, medial, all kinds of good fun stuff.
13:17 I'm just messing up the names big time.
13:20 You have your abdominal muscles.
13:22 And you got all that stuff.
13:24 So that's your first rough sketch, right?
13:26 Horrible, horrible.
13:29 But what you can do is you can take this layer and you can go where it says opacity and drop
13:34 that down really low.
13:37 Create a brand new layer on top of that.
13:39 And then with more care, start to refine your artwork.
13:44 So I'll go ahead and put those traps in.
13:45 Put the collarbone in.
13:51 Go ahead and get those pecs in.
13:55 Go ahead and get that shoulder going.
13:56 Okay, but like I said, we got those different muscles.
14:00 We got a little bit of the triceps.
14:05 And I'm just taking my time.
14:06 I'm just going ahead and going to put that biceps muscle in.
14:13 And once again, I'm just messing up.
14:14 Don't worry about me.
14:15 I'm not really focusing on getting everything correct.
14:18 I'm just showing you guys a quick technique to help get a little bit more accuracy and
14:24 refinement in your drawings.
14:25 Start with a very quick sketch and then I'm going to hide this one down here.
14:29 So you can see it's not great.
14:30 It's horrible actually.
14:31 It's terrible.
14:32 I'm used to drawing on paper actually.
14:33 And in Photoshop, by the way, I can hold down the R key on the keyboard and I can rotate
14:38 the canvas to draw the way I actually draw, which is at an angle like this.
14:42 I draw at a very, very harsh angle.
14:44 Never, never like this.
14:45 So that's why it looks so bad.
14:46 I'm going fast.
14:47 But once again, you can take the layer that you just finished doing and if you want to
14:52 create another refinement layer, go ahead and dim that one.
14:55 Create another one and just build from there.
14:57 The beautiful thing is you can hide these layers if you're not happy with it and you
15:00 can continue.
15:02 Another reason you want to use layers is let's say you're doing a character who's wearing
15:05 armor.
15:06 Well, what you can do is you have the sketch you're happy with and you create a new layer
15:11 and you double click right here where it says Layer 4.
15:14 Call it Armor.
15:16 And you can do a sketch of the armor the character is wearing.
15:19 So he could be wearing some shoulder plates.
15:20 So I'll go ahead and just draw the shoulder plate like this.
15:24 And so he's a knight and he's wearing some plates and I can go ahead and put the shadows
15:29 where that's going to go and all that kind of stuff.
15:32 And I can go ahead and start to draw different parts of the character.
15:36 I can go on this bottom layer now and I can take my eraser tool and I can erase the other
15:41 parts that I just finished drawing.
15:43 So you can use digital technology to really help take your artwork to the next level and
15:48 also give you the flexibility of having layers and the ability to save the file, undo things
15:53 and change them and so on.
15:55 So that is a quick look at some of the sketch concepts and ideas you might want to incorporate
15:59 in your workflow.
16:06 Storyboards are one of those topics that animators have a little bit of a debate over.
16:12 I for one am not a big fan of storyboarding.
16:15 Although I sometimes do see and recognize that it is necessary.
16:19 To me I'd rather just get in there and animate and fix it later.
16:23 Believe it or not, this is how I work.
16:25 I'm not very structured.
16:26 I'm not a person who plans a lot when it comes to creativity.
16:30 I have an idea and I kind of go for it.
16:33 It either works or it doesn't work.
16:35 So I like that kind of freedom.
16:37 But for those of you who really want to be structured and very streamlined and methodical
16:42 in your planning of your animation, I want to show you some options available to you
16:47 as far as software.
16:49 One is from Toon Boom itself and the other is a mobile application for people who may
16:55 have an iPhone or any device that this application I'm about to show you is supported by.
17:00 So here is the Toon Boom storyboard family and you can find this of course by going to
17:06 the Toon Boom website.
17:08 This is storyboard and storyboard pro.
17:12 There are some features that they show you on the website as to how this works and it
17:16 tells you who would use which version.
17:19 As you can see, quite a difference in price.
17:22 So what exactly is a storyboard?
17:25 Well I'm going to have to guess that since you're an animator you kind of know what they
17:28 are but just in case.
17:31 Think of a storyboard as a comic book that shows every stage of your film.
17:37 So that when you share it with the director and the production people, they can see on
17:41 the wall or on a screen the progression of the film.
17:45 How it's going to start, what's going to happen in the middle, what special effects you might
17:49 want to add, how the lighting is going to look, the shots you want to choose and so
17:53 on and so forth.
17:55 So once again this is storyboard and storyboard pro.
17:59 Now on the iPhone there's an application called Hitchcock and it allows you to take images
18:05 and to do all kinds of cinematic moves and plan out your film on your phone.
18:11 I know, technology has really, really come far and I can't wait to see what's next.
18:17 Now I just want to quickly show you what a storyboard could potentially look like.
18:22 This is very, very quickly done.
18:24 This is my own storyboard paper that I created for my company and I will have this for you
18:29 guys in the work files folder.
18:31 This is the Die Hard Studio storyboard paper when I can have enough caffeine to actually
18:36 want to storyboard.
18:38 So as you can see here I have a couple of these empty frames or cells.
18:42 These are where you're going to draw your artwork.
18:45 So as you can see you can type the production or write it here.
18:48 So I did a tutorial for iLife and you can check that out at the Virtual Training Company
18:54 website.
18:55 So you can put in whatever the production is called.
18:58 In this case it was for a spoof horror movie I did called Hungry Bunnies.
19:04 They were bunnies that go around eating stuffing of other stuffed animals.
19:08 Kind of crazy.
19:09 So I would put Hungry Bunnies up here.
19:12 As far as artists I put myself and the date.
19:15 I could type a description of the shot, any dialogue.
19:19 I could type a length if I wanted to, hours, minutes, seconds or frames.
19:23 I could specify what type of lighting.
19:25 For example, dark basement, special effects, rain, lightning, whatever, fast music, slow
19:31 music, creepy music.
19:33 And I can draw a very quick sketch.
19:36 Here's a door open and we're looking down into a basement.
19:40 The door closes, the doorknob turns, and then so on and so forth.
19:46 You can even use these little bubbles here to write shot numbers.
19:49 So you can put 1, 2, 3, 1A, whatever you want to put in those bubbles.
19:54 Once again, this is going to be included for you guys in the work files folder.
19:58 So that is how important storyboards are for your film.
20:01 Especially if you want to take a lot of time to think about your film.
20:06 And like I said, there are people like myself who want to wing it and just go for it.
20:10 And that's just how I am.
20:11 But the choice is yours.
20:12 I just want to give you some options that you can explore.
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