PEMDAS: The Animatic!

Following up with my previous blahg post, here is the original storyboard animatic that I put together for TED-Ed.  Next time I'll write more on how I got from this to the final animated short!

PEMDAS: The Process, Part I

I've recently posted some pre-production goodness over on my site for my TED-Ed animated short, PEMDAS or How To Defeat a Dragon with Math (YouTube).  I wanted to take some time in this blog to walk thru how I go about making a project for TED-Ed from start to finish.  It may not be the model way to do things but it gets the job done, son!  Overall the whole process from pre-production to final posting takes anywhere between a month and a month and a half.

To get things started, TED sends me an audio file -- sometimes of my choosing, sometimes not -- and from there I begin listening to it over and over annnnd over.  I'll listen to it while I'm on the train, in the shower, grocery shoppin, etc etc so I can start brainstorming ideas & listening for workable rhythms in the narration.  I rarely cut up the audio, to whatever benefit or downsides that may provide.  Mainly I don't do it because I'd rather present the material as how it may play out in someone's head during a lecture.  Plus I don't need it to be any longer than it already is, I have a lot of ground to cover in a short time.  Initially, I start sorting out what could make for funny sight gags and what the characters might look like.

And then I let my brain crap all over my notebook for a few days, like this.

The scribble at the bottom eventually became the last shot in the animation of the desert.

First dragon drawings

Working out how I wanted to represent the musketeers

Fleshing out the dragon, if time permitted I was originally aiming to make him much more complicated.

More musketeer work where I decided on making parentheses 'just arms'

BONUS: Brain Crap isn't just for math design, here's an elephant from my last TED-Ed short.

Ahhh... wasn't that refreshing to get that all out?  I'm always jealous of some of my artist friends who keep amazingly well-kept sketchbooks full of beautiful drawings and proportion studies.  Mine looks like a four-year-old's with randomly fleshed-out drawings peppered in...

Due to the compressed nature of my TED-Ed productions (i.e. just me & producer) I usually start on storyboarding before or during initial character design, so my animatics typically end up looking nothing like the final product.  Certain parts will get chopped up, reworked or removed altogether.  This is true of all my TED-Ed projects but especially this latest one, with a much higher concentration of character interactions and backgrounds than my first two, which had long spans of charts and text animation.

Here are a few select storyboards and screenshots to compare storyboard vs. the final product:

My original design for the imperial senate.  The robot things were ... just that.  Overall, it looked too small and confined for me in the end.

The final design for the senate.  I added a truck with the words spelled out to better flow with the narration and changed the robot things to Star Wars® trash can droids for ease of animation.  Plus -- the guy was making a Star Wars reference and I needed to give it some sort of acknowledgement.  EXTRA NERD BONUS: The Imperial Senate has imperial units of measurement worked into its design. 

This was the animatic's original "Happy Ever After" shot... I had no idea how I was going to represent the Land of Pi design-wise and didn't have it down solid until about 10 days before final delivery.  So instead I had numbers and balloons.  Creativity.

The original "PEMDAS! There's another spot!" ... I wasn't really sure who I wanted to have yelling that line out so I just made a generic person.  The mouth was fun to draw.

This was the way I originally intended to show the musketeers riding their steeds toward the dragon.  After I got around to designing the horses, everything looked too jumbled up and busy so I went with the following design instead... 

The final version of the musketeers riding their steeds.

Finally, we come to the storyboard that eventually became the first image of this blog post.  This went through a few different changes, from the phone yelling to a wanted poster to a Street Fighter-style VS. screen to the musketeers sliding down a fire pole onto their horses.  Sometimes it's better just to keep it simple.

.... to be continued!



TOMORROW:  What Was I Animating 10 Years Ago?

MONDAY:  The Animatic! 

NEXT WEEK:  The Process, Part II  

More TED-Ed in the Works

... this time with more topical!

*bonus

TED-Ed: Storyboards VS. Final Product

Here's a side-by-side of some shots from my upcoming animation for TED-Ed.  On the left is the original storyboard accompanied with their final composition.

This scene originally called for more complicated movements by the piano tuner, but in order to meet the deadline I simplified the overall animation in the final.

This character was originally supposed to be a young boy, but given what happens to him I didn't want to have to redo anything... that's why I ended up going with "non-descriptive creepy guy"

There's a lot of text animation in this piece, and I saved laying that out until I was in production mode.

This one turned out pretty similar to the boards.

This scene was modified a bit to take advantage of the screen space... keeping the magnifying glass small on screen for 15 seconds would've looked too awkward. 

I kept his teeth clenched together to save some time... the sacrifices one must make in order to beat the clock!

Coming Soon: TED-Ed

I've been busy with more fun freelance projects lately, the most recent to have wrapped is a short I directed, designed & animated for TED Talks' sister site, TED Ed.  A few months ago my friend Jeremy pointed me to this page on their site saying that I should put my name in the hat for animator nominations.  A few weeks later I was contacted about doing some work and was assigned a four minute lesson.  I was granted a lot of creative control and it was such a pleasure to have the opportunity to work on a project for TED.  Before it's official release, I'll be posting a few bits from the production like storyboards, sound work, design ideas, and other random info.  

In the meantime, here are a few screenshots of what to expect: 

Awww yeah there will be pianos!

... this is where creative control is fun to exercise.

There will also be pianos in pants.

Everyone's fourth-favorite 20th Century physicist!

Storyboard: Fun with Science

Are the powers of ten getting you down?

Concept Art & Painting in Photoshop

I took a stab at some concept-arting* for a project last month that involved painting in Photoshop.  I haven't done much digital painting yet so it was pretty new to me; I really enjoyed doing it & want to work on refining it more.  Just think of all the detailed pimples & vivid in-grown hairs I could paint... maybe if I ever save up enough money to get me a fancy new Cintiq...**

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

More on these & what they're for later...



* If you want to check out what beautiful professional-level concept art looks like, check out this great tumblr feed: FUCKYEAHCONCEPTART 


** In the meantime, I did take the time to pre-order Wacom's new Inkling on Amazon.com and if you love to draw and are looking for a $200 investment that will change the way you sketch & edit illustrations then I highly encourage you to do the same.  I think it will be a great opportunity to get back into hand-drawn animation as well, since there's no tedious need to scan every image.

Behind the Scenes: Bounty Storyboards

Here are the original boards I drew up for Bounty back when we started the project.  Some of them are pretty close to how the final turned out while others.... notsomuch.

This part got cut from the final which I was totally fine with.

This section also got cut which I was pretty disappointed about.

Having the chance to animate King Kong and a Godzilla-like monster would've been a lot of fun.

UGH the sumo wrestler was my favorite part and I was super bummed they killed him off.

I was proud of my tiger drawing in the second frame.

The Chilean Miner character eventually got changed over to an MMA wrestler.  'Probably for the best.

I mean c'mon it was going to end with them riding that flying sumo wrestler!  It would've been like poetry but that's life sometimes.