Monday (03/11/25):
On this day we presented our storyboards to everyone and were given feedback about them. I was super excited to watch everyone’s animatics, and really enjoyed seeing how differently everyone approached the prompts, with some people also making an animatic out of their own ideas.
Before we were given feedback, I wrote some for myself that I could consider later if I wanted to:
- Add metallic sound when ring is thrown at CHARACTER A
- Add restaurant ambience
- Zoom into phone (?)
My peers seemed to react positively to the voice acting which was a relief. This was the feedback I received from both Izzy and my classmates that I was able to understand from my atrocious handwriting:
- 180 degree rule went slightly awry during the middle of the animatic
- Establish where everyone is placed with a midshot as I used too many close-ups
- Liked how expressive the characters were
- Possibly add love hearts at the end (hopeful smiles + love hearts).
- Didn’t understand the frame where CHARACTER B has her head down, perhaps zoom into her face more to show her distress and overwhelm (add whispers increasing in volume as if she believes everyone is talking about what just happened). Then abruptly go back to a midshot when she sees the waitress sitting opposite her.
- (I didn’t write this but I do still remember Izzy mentioning it) Try removing a few frames to shorten the video as it isn’t meant to be 1m 30s.
My notes
I think I received really good and constructive feedback that I did mostly use when modifying my animatic later on in the day. However, I didn’t know when to add a mid-shot, and felt it would take up more time in the animatic when I already went 1 minute over the limit. Therefore, I didn’t end up adding any new frames (I didn’t remove any either as I didn’t know what to delete).
Wednesday (05/11/25):
At the beginning of the lesson I began redrawing my animatic in Clip Studio Paint. I wanted to animate CHARACTER A’s conversation as he talks about nothing in particular while CHARACTER B “listens”, and so I wrote “BLAHBLAHBLAH” across the screen twice, making it seem as if his words are both metaphorically and literally travelling over CHARACTER B’s head. I then blurred the background (and CHARACTER A’s blah’s) in the 6th frame, emphasising how CHARACTER B notices CHARACTER A’s phone pinging incessantly. I didn’t end up finishing the animatic on CSP, so here is a video of my progress:
PLEASE NOTE: Increasing the volume is advised for a better viewing experience.
A bit later on, Marcelina looked at the animatic that I showed Izzy and the rest of the class on Monday. I wasn’t expecting too much, but was somehow surprised when I was told to remove almost all of my animatic to fit the 30 second limit since the plot becomes very repetitive and watered down after a point. She suggested that I could change the dialogue (after CHARACTER A stammers “She’s my sister I swear-“) to make the waitress scream “Your girlfriend?!” and then slap CHARACTER A, and when he spins towards CHARACTER B she yells “Your sister?!” and slaps him back, and it devolves into a slapping match, before CHARACTER A is kicked out and the girls enjoy a drink to celebrate.
My notes
In hindsight, I do enjoy the idea and should have listened to the feedback Marcelina properly, but at the time I felt a bit misled since Izzy and Marcelina gave me such conflicting feedback (in terms of how much I needed to remove). Moreover, the feedback was given 2 days before needing to present the work and I didn’t have any sticky notes left, nor did I think of buying any more until Thursday (and I still didn’t buy any!). In that moment, my ego got the better of me and I didn’t end up taking Marcelina’s feedback forward and reducing the animatic to 30 seconds, as I felt the character arcs I created would be diminished and they’d be reduced to shallow archetypes.
It took me a long time to figure out what to do after that, as my mind felt too clouded to properly proceed with cutting out parts of my animatic. I did end up cutting it down to 1 minute and didn’t add anything further due to the feeling that I would accidentally remove key plot points. Key shots that I removed included:
- Other people’s reactions (objectively took too much time),
- CHARACTER B’s monologue (did not have to be that long, edited it to make it seem like CHARACTER A is interrupting her)
- CHARACTER B’s hand curling into a fist
- CHARACTER A recoiling after the slap and facing the waitress, who he toothily smiles at, before being slapped again. Instead, it just cuts straight to the slapping match.
- CHARACTER B shaking in place with whispers around her.
I didn’t remove other scenes, such as the waitress showing her wedding ring before throwing it at CHARACTER A, CHARACTER A leaning in for a smooch, or CHARACTER B’s hesitance while the waitress was bashing CHARACTER A against the window, as I felt they were too important to the plot and showed a part of their personality, even though it meant the animatic still went over the 30 second limit.
While I felt increasingly dissatisfied (I thought was too unfinished now that parts were cut out), I ended up not wanting to overthink anymore and submitted it, intending to take a break on Thursday to clear my thoughts.
Friday (07/11/25):
I didn’t feel confident showing my animatic to the class as visually it didn’t change, and generally most of the plot had been removed so I felt it wouldn’t be as good. I was honestly surprised when people preferred it to the previous one in terms of pacing, although it was suggested that at times the pacing was inconsistent, and it would have be good to stick to only one arc rather than multiple. In that moment I felt very guilty because Marcelina said the same thing, I just didn’t want to listen in fear of “ruining” my work.
Overall, while I did enjoy the animatic rotation, I felt very drained towards the end of the second week because of how much brainpower I put into overthinking my animatic and second-guessing everything, only to merely remove 30 seconds from a 1m 30s animation. I didn’t enjoy this rotation as much as the characterflux rotations, but this was definitely the rotation where I learnt the most important lessons for my future projects thanks to the mistakes I made.
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