Q1 Progress: Weeks 1-2

Project:

Goals:

• Finish most of the scenes

• Have a usable product that I can go back and refine

• Have good composition and clarity

I ditched OpenToonz in favor of Procreate. I might explore OpenToonz if I want to make something more complicated. It may it more suited to polished, short pieces. In this project, my plan was already ambitious. I didn't want to waste time learning a new software in only six class periods.

I think I succeeded in all three goals. I think it's very clear what's going on while making the camera angles moderately interesting. I also have almost enough necessary scenes. I need the ending, of the child crawling into the person's arms. After that, I could draw couple more murder scenes that are about as complex as the nine scenes I already did.

I have some notes for how to improve my next animation project (though I'm not sure if that will actually happen). I need to do at least two passes of thumbnails so I can experiment with different compositions for shots. I also may need a larger storyboard with more detail than a thumbnail. The black and white is good, but I still managed to overcomplicate things, which resulted in different shots having different values. I'll try to plan what colors to use in the sketchbook phase, rather than figure it out on the fly.