Stephen M. Levinson's Blog

Hello everyone! Been awhile since the last “My Step” post, and a couple people have been asking when the next step will be available. Well today’s that day!

So after I have the writing down the way I want it, I go into my rough storyboard phase. I draw sketches on little 2”x 3” sticky notes that you can get anywhere. The reason I do this stage is so that I can just put on paper what I imagine each part of the story to look like. I use Sticky notes because then I could easily mix and match different board frames, or remove and redo frames without having to erase the storyboard box. I think it’s very helpful and because you’re not as committed to each drawing, it’s easier to change little things without redoing an entire storyboard page.

After I look over my rough storyboards, I go into more detailed storyboards. The purpose of the second board is to get in more detail about how everything is going to look. The boards that i’ve decided are in the right order are put into regular storyboard paper. You will notice I only put 2 squares on each of my storyboard pages instead of 3. The reason?…No reason. I shouldn’t of wasted so much paper actually.

So now that I have my second pass at my boards, I turn it into an animatic. This will help me with the timing of my short, as well as to give me an idea of how long my short will be. It’s also helpful because if I don’t feel certain scenes flow very well in the story, I won’t animate it. It’s good to do this animatic and cut the animatics before animating. You could do the animating and then cut the film, but then you put in waisted time on animation you could of spent animating on scenes that will actually be in the film. Time is the biggest thing I needed to keep in mind when I created this film. I think strong deadlines really helped me get this film done.

You can watch the entire episode of A&A as the 1st animatic ( 2nd rough storyboards ) here!!! ( 44.2 MB quicktime. Please right-click and download to computer )

So after I make sure things look good to me, I cut the scenes. Remember, each time there is a camera change in the short, that’s a new scene. I divided each of my scenes into different FLA’s because I didn’t want flash slowing down. If I had every scene in my film in one fla, it would take hours to open, save and even function at all normally. Each scene as an FLA is a good thing to do! So I created many fla’s and over 100 to be exact.

After that I went into my “Animation-Animatic Rough”. This rough will be exactly what the animation will look like. I drew out all the keyframe positions will be. If you don’t know flash talk, keyframes in this case would be each position. For example, Ace’s hand being up then the next keyframe Ace’s hand would be down. I also timed it so that when I’m animating I already know how long actions should take. Again, this is a great step especially when you’re working in flash because knowing what each frames action is leading to, is smart. It’s not like you have no clue what the next action will be. I think working without blocking passes ( timed poses ) is not a smart way to work in flash.

You can watch the entire episode of A&A as the 2nd animatic ( Animation-Animatic Rough ) here!!! ( 25.9 MB quicktime. Please right-click and download to computer )

I actually created each of the Animation-Animatic Rough’s inside each scenes FLA. Then after I got it timed the way I’d like, I removed the first animatic layer. I will now be animating on top of the Animation-Animatic Rough. Animation…next step! Stay tooned!

My Step 1: Characters and idea.
My Step 2: Writing.

More soon… Stay tooned!
Best,
SL

PS. If these posts of mine are helpful, please tell me below. I don’t know if I’m just blogging stuff no one wants to hear…