Animatics

I developed on both of my ideas through animatic as I thought I'd be able to narrow them down by seeing them somewhat in motion and in a more complete form. I first went over the idea of travelling through the well and added more movement to the initial animatic I made in my last post.

Adding the movement helped make the piece clearer, although I didn't manage to line everything up clearly in After Effects and it's too long when fitting to the music. If this is the route I'm following for this project I need to explore how I can make the contrast between the man's boring commute and the chaos of the inside of the well even greater and possibly humorous. I then developed on my sequence for the girl's day-today life in the underground mushroom settlement.

I started this animatic only really knowing where the beginning was going and enjoyed making an atmosphere. I really liked how carefree the beginning of the animatic felt, and the sort of careless and whimsical nature of childhood is what I had wanted to create. I then went on to end it with a break from her imagination and her mum calling her in for a meal and it's then revealed that she was making the normal everyday more magical in her mind as she wanders past street lamps instead of mushrooms, crosses bridges over roads and passes window cleaners where the painters were. Although the animatic becomes less clear I was happy with this addition to the sequence, the feeling of coming back round in a circle to the beginning but in a different way is a nice way to end it. It could be changed so that the house at the end is still whimsical even though it's in a more realistic landscape, creating a link with her imagination and reality. On a similar path I could have more mushrooms around her home even if it's just normal as a different form of linking it back.

After further discussion and thought on the ending of this I have changed it so there isn't any mirroring involved at the end as she makes her way home, instead she simply leaves the shot where she was sat beneath the tree. The book she was reading is left there to open and imply that the magic of her imagination remains rather than demolishing the illusion like in the animatic above. Here's the final animatic: