Rough Cut

This is first rough cut. This consists of the animation I have done so far joined with the storyboard/animatic to create a dual mixture of my final quality animation and my animatic.

So far I am very pleased with the product, it looks very much how I intended but I am concerned about how much animation I have left to do and the time left available.

Animating

Today I continued animating different sections of the video. Rather than animating the scenes in order, I chose to just pick particular scenes I wanted finish first. Once these were finshed I would begin layering them over the top of the animatic. This way it makes it easier to edit and I can see what needs to go where and how long each shot should be.

Starting the animation

This is shot2 of my animated music video ( see animatic )

This is the quality I expect my final piece to be, this scene is not finished but this again gives a feel as to how I want my final piece to look.

Animatic

This is my animatic for my animated music video. It consists of my storyboard images played in sequence with the soundtrack over the visuals. This gives a feel and a rough image of how I want my music video to look.

Storyboarding

This image here shows the character progression I have gone through to create the band members animated figures. The top image shows the draw characters in their first stage. The second shows my initial ideas for the first set location and my interpretation of that. The third is my first digital collaboration of the digital characters and the background. The fourth is simply the same as the image before but in colour as I have yet to choose how I wish my video to be saturated or desaturated.

After experimenting with my character designs I placed them into flash to draw digital counterparts, which would then be used in my animation. These came out looking like the following images above. The beginnings of my storyboard also began to take hold as I began to plan locations and further narrative structure. The music video will begin with the performers, Tom (singer) and Sam (guitarist) located on a lonely road through the desert. Both look into the camera and perform, this is to engage the audience and follow codes and conventions of performance based music videos. However with this one I intend to have a dual narrative and possibly subvert codes and conventions by merging the performance section of the animation into the narrative to create almost a mixed narrative and performance towards the end. I chose to locate the beginning of the animation on a desert road as it is a lonely, desolate place and it mirrors this stage of the narrative in which our main character in the narrative ( not a particular band member ) will be searching for love and at the beginning he is very alone. As the narrative continues he will eventually find it creating a stereotypical happy ending.

This is one screenshot from my storyboard which is nearing completion. Once completed I will take these still shots and create an animatic which will give a detailed impression of how I wish my final piece to look.

initial ideas for storyboard

After listening to the song several times I began listing how I thought the song felt and I began to produce initial ideas as to themes and subjects that should be portrayed in the narrative of my music video. I thought that as it is a common factor in most musical lyrics I think I shall include the theme of love/relationships. This would be further reinforced by the slow paced and lonely feel to the track I'm using. After more brainstorming of ideas I concluded this would be my focal theme. I already designed my initial character designs so I know the look and style of how I want the animation to be, this will follow a similar visual experience as the monkeehub animations. As the song sounds very soft and placid, and the title 'complacent' seems very fitting to this therefore I wish to create a similar tone in the music video. 

Conclusion for target audience

After analyzing my questionnaire results I have concluded my target audience. As my chosen song and band (  Complacent acoustic by Against Spoken Words ) are an indie band from Bucks I need target the appropriate audience. The audience Im aiming for is to be aged mainly under 19 although I am aware others older may listen to a similar style of music. I will aim more towards the male audience using correct props for the genre in the video and having a narrative that runs through.