NEW STORY (animatic)

With a week to think of a new story and storyboard it, I finally finished the animatic.

I think it still needs a lot of work on the timing, and there are a few shots from the flashback sequences missing, but I'm finding it hard to think of decent ones that will summarize the story well in still images. Something I'll get more into in the future.

Also, the shot when the troll first spots the faun girl, with the change of perspective, it is not very well represented in the animatic, but my intentions with it are to, once the 'camera' is supposed to rotate to follow through the other side where the troll is, I will add some leaves that will eventually cover the screen into black for a split of a second where the transition will happen. I don't think I need to go into 3D for this.

LETTING GO

After about 92 storyboard drawings and many hours of work and individual tutorials with the tutors, I had an animatic finished and was prepared to start animating scenes for the movie. Until, unlike my usual self, I decided to change the whole story and plot very close to deadline. Perhaps the fact that I didn't spend time mourning for putting all the work I'd done for that idea behind my back means that I made a good decision, but I am a bit put off about the fact that I will not reach the goal I had set of having started animating scenes before the Christmas break.
Following goes some of the main things I had done for that story.

Screen shot test to see if the characters would clash with the background. Although the background is not finished, I'd created a colour palette reference for the other backgrounds from inside the forest

This is one of the cliffs I was working on for the very first background of the film

The animatic. I can imagine that it is not easy to read what is happening at times, specially with some of the shots (particularly the childish drawing on the wall) that were in need of being replaced with the final designs

A very unfinished walk cycle test for the troll

STORY AND PLOT

In the beginning I was trying to think up a story using the drawings I had already done as reference.

The very first story featured all three characters, the troll, the deer and the faungirl and the main action would happen in a clear much like the one in The Troll and the Deer, as seen in the first post. Here I was still thinking of the faungirl as the main character and the plot would follow her lost in the forest looking for her adoptive mother, consequently leading her to a meet up with the troll.

A perspective test looking down in the forest. The faun girl would be wandering about here

A mock-up screenshot for the first plot idea

At some point, I let go of the faun girl and thought of a setting with a very different, much darker nature to it. It followed the deer being chased down by a couple of wolves. As the deer was close to being caught the troll appeared and killed the wolves. Thinking the troll just saved her, the deer approached him not knowing that he merely eliminated the predators that were on his way of capturing his dinner.

After this, I went back to the original idea of making a more easy going story, where the troll wasn't as menacing as expected. Eventually I let go of the deer and for a while tried to come up with something that would involve the troll saving the faungirl from certain doom.


Lastly, after many considerations, I ended up letting go of the whole idea of the story and coming up with something new. Now, instead of having the troll and the faungirl meeting up by mere chance, I decided that there would be something linking the two that would bring them together. Seeing as both characters have similar backgrounds, there is the chance that, in a way or another, they can relate to each other. The faungirl sees in the troll the endearing side he has, and hence, a protective figure she lacks after losing her parents; and the troll sees himself in the faungirl, from when his whole species was extincted from the forest and he was left alone as a child.
In the plot of the short film I will be producing, the side of the troll is the one that I'll focus on, but I always like to have an idea of the motivation of all the characters, even if in the end it won't be important for the audience to be aware of.

THE CHARACTERS (used and not)

The troll: the misunderstood creature thought to be vile and dangerous by outsiders, but known to be the protector of the forest by the creatures that live in it. Regardless, the troll is still carnivorous and not very picky as to what he'll have for dinner (concept described in The Lion King as the 'Circle of Life'). He was one of the main characters of all the stories I thought of, but following advice given, I started thinking about the story from a different character's perspective and that's when I made the troll the very main character to follow.

Very early concept working around structure

The second design, primal inspiration for the final outcome

Trying out body proportions and anatomy as I wanted the troll to also walk on his fours

Final design turnaround, less realistic and with a more solid structure (hopefully)

The deer: a stranger in the forest, there is little that can be known about her. I ended up letting go of this character, but at first she was the faun girl's adoptive mother.

I did very little drawing for this character apart from practicing how to draw deers and a few tries at simplifying the forms

Ainya: she is a young, orphan faun girl. She was the adopted child of the deer until I took the latter one out of the picture. Now she is a wanderer, trying to survive alone after her parents were killed by a pack of wolves. She was one of the main characters from the start, and the one which the story developed around before I swapped her with the troll.

A few drawings showing the evolution of her design

A few drawings I did over Summer that became the main base for the final design

Final design turnaround

Some expressions, although I'm not very pleased with a few of the drawings

The Tree: even though this tree will most likely not be seen as a character by others, I like to think of it as one. This is the Mother Tree of the forest, majestic and old. It is also the tree that housed the few tree troll families that lived in this forest before the raid that almost wiped all of them out of the forest's history. Now only the one troll lives in it, right at the top where he can watch over his forest.