Week 6: Background Design and Storyboard
What we have learned last week:
Staging
The presentation of an idea or scene that is easy to read.
Appeal
This is what makes you like a character. Whether it's for their beauty, their smarts, their stupidity, their cuteness, their super powers, and/or their likable personality.
What we have learned this week
Background Design
Background design is the scenery behind the character(s) that can either be drawn in stills or panorama, or a wide angle shot.
Iron Giant (1999)
Mulan (1998)
Power Puff Girls (1998)
Tom and Jerry (1940)
The design usually is made up of three layers:
Foreground
Middle Ground
Background
The Foreground is the layer that is in the very frond of the picture. It is usually darker with bolder lines and has the most detail.
The Middle is the layer in between the Foreground and the Background. It may have slightly less detail than the Foreground and is usually the space where the most action takes place.
The Background is the layer in the very back. It has the least amount of detail because 1.) The further away and object/person is, the least detail that you see and 2.) The Background will most likely not be the vocal point of the scene.
All of this helps to create depth, or make the environment look 3-dimensional. This also helps when you want to animate the scenery.
Take a look at how this scene moves.
Looks flat right? That's because the foreground, middle ground, and background are all moving at the same speed. This does not happen in real life.
Now look at this scene.
As you can see here, the foreground moves at a faster pace, the middle ground is slightly slower, and the background is at a snail's pace to create depth. I did this using the program Adobe Flash CS4. Here is how Disney did the same effect back in the early years.
What is a Storyboard?
Do you like to read comics? Well, that how a storyboard looks like.
A storyboard is a series of pictures drawn on single panels to help tell the story before going into production. That way, the animator and background designers will know what to do when making the animation.
Remember how we talked about how Staging is about presenting and idea in a clear, legible fashion? When making a storyboard, you want to make sure that everything is drawn as clear as possible so that everyone working with you can see how the story will play out. Otherwise, you will end up having to go back and draw it again and that cuts into production time.
They can either be in color
in pen/pencil
or in grays.
Now that you know what a storyboard is, now let's talk about animatics.
An animatic is when you take your story board and edit them together with sound and dialog to not only work out the timing on each scene, but to also give a glimpse on how the final product will look like.
Here is an example with Disney's 'Baby Weems'
Week 5 Week 7
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