Today’s the deadline for our story treatment as well as storyboard and animatic.
The Story/Treatment
Although I wanted to continue developing the storyboard of my treatment, it was killed to make room for another original pitch of mine, Doctor Bum. Regardless, I present to you “The White Wolf”
The story was originally a far darker one, but the x-mas spirit got the best of me, I guess… I don’t know what to tell you about the process of making this story, as I straight out just sat down and wrote it. There were influences though, and the main plot in this story is about as classic as it gets. For instance Kung fu Panda employs the same “from zero to hero” plot, where the hero starts out as a clumsy addition to a gang of kung fu masters, but gains the respect of them all as the movie ends.
The Storyboard
Before we could make a group decision on which one of the treatments we should develop further, Sverre had allready started on making panels for Dr Bum, which kind of made our decision a easy one. Seeing as it was a good story, none of us raised a hand in protest.
Having a group where everyone possess a above normal degree of drawing skill, where below normal is limited to stick figures doing naughty stuff, was a relief in my opinion. I would have NO problems drawing the whole storyboard on my own, but its important that everyone feels included, and being able to actually draw shots you think will work is key to contribute in a storyboard workflow.
There were a few arguements in the group, which I personally think is great AND necessary. If you don’t care about the story you’re doing enough to argue about it, its probably not worth doing at all. Among the topics were the ending. We kept getting feedback from other students saying it was unclear on the point that Doctor Bum stayed behind when the rocket launched. Also, no-one seemed to understand that the man flying the rocket in his place was his old scientist buddy which he previously met.
here’s the panels I drew.
The group worked well all in all. Some came to draw more than others, but in the end everyone had invested a fair share of time into the final product. Sverre did most of the drawing on this project though, so he deserves some extra renown 
The Animatic
Here’s the animatic for our storyboard. The only difference here is the sequence of panels where he’s about to launch and freaks out. The scene where he starts the countdown was also changed a little. Great Thanks to Einar for practically doing all the after-effects work, while we were shouting from the back seat 
And thanks to Kim for taking the time to edit 140+ panels! My work on this animatic was limited to timing and camera panning/zoom input.
converting a storyboard to a animatic could be fairly tricky. Sometimes panels that work well in the storyboard simply doesn’t work in the animatic, and people lose track of whats happening. The trick is to imagine what you’re drawing as a movie at the storyboard phase. I was pleased to hear from Einar, that my section of the storyboard, the flashback, worked really well! Having this animatic will be invaluable if we’re going to continue making this short.
