This week I was working on making my animatic ready for our practise pitches on Tuesday. I originally put all of my rough storyboard frames into it, but seeing it put to the right pace I realised that it was far too long as well as adding unnecessary details that the story was clear without. The original too long animatic is below:
I then cut out a lot of the opening and cut down a few pieces in the centre, as well as taking away the reaction shot at the end as the audience can have their own reaction to Dodge Cat's movements. The improved animatic is below:
This week I've also developed on the character of the cat, thinking that he could be adapted from another Beano character. I looked through their featured cats and landed on Dodge Cat, the pet of Rodger the Dodger, who gets up to his own dodges and tricks in his own way. I kept his colour pattern but abandoned his neck scarf as I thought it made him look too well kept to be going through the bins. I'm planning to have an allusion to it at the beginning though, when he pops his head out from the rubbish he will have a checker-block ribbon caught on him, that he shakes off before getting to the window. I have kept the nick in his ear too, as it adds to his raggedy nature. Once I had his design down I drew up some more detailed model sheets of him in Photoshop.
[ Dodge Cat in the comics ]
[ My redesign of Dodge Cat ]
I really enjoyed drawing the second collection of poses as you can really play around with cats and their bodies as they're very flexible and expressive. He's stolen the show from Pansy more than a little!
The day before our practise pitches I tuned into the Year 4 final film pitches which were really helpful to watch, they made my nerves simmer down a little for the next day and pointed me to what I should be including in my presentation. After they presented, those of us in Year 3 also did quick pitches to the music students who were in the teams call, which has lead to a connection with a 4th Year composition student Donny Nam who is interested in composing for my film! I really didn't expect anyone to come forward for my film as I wasn't so confident in my plot at the time so it's awesome that Donny has offered their skills! The work of theirs that I've heard is all really impressive with a real narrative feel too, so I look forward to collaborating with them over the project!
Here are the slides of my presentation in order:
I'm happy with my presentation, I think it goes through all the aspects of my film in the right order and enough detail as I talk over them in the pitch. I would like to create some sort of test animation, or animate a small fraction of what I've storyboarded to add to the end to show the characters in motion. I also think it would be a good flourish to end it on to hopefully give a lasting impression on those I am presenting to.
The practise pitch itself went really well, I feel like I spoke clearly and explained the film and characters well, and the animatic had good responses from the audience. I've never really worked with comedy much before, especially slapstick, so it was really rewarding to hear people laugh at what I had put together. The main thing I need to work on is changing a couple details in the animatic-
I need to make it more obvious that it's set in a school, I'm planning to do this with an establishing shot at the beginning, and adding 'Class 2B' over the door rather than just '2B'.
Show Pansy's super strength more. The only time I allude to her strength is when she rips Dodge Cat from the wall, which isn't clear that she's super strong, just that's she's strong. I think I'm going to add her picking up the bookshelf and trying to shake him off as he clings on for dear life in the shot with the teacher listening to music in the foreground.
Play around with the design of the feet. Some of the feedback I got was that the feet look a little too blocky and less expressive than the rest of the character, so I will think about how I can improve their shape or style. I want to change the model sheets slightly so that Pansy is wearing a red jumper instead of a blazer anyway (so that the black and white cat will show up against her better than against the grey blazer) so I will think about it then.
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