The rough Storyboards

Prepare to shield your eyes from the attrocity that my boards are.
I am definitely not a storyboard person, but I do try to make them decent.

Edit: I finished lost and found again these last 10 panels, so I thought that I'd post them.
I hate the end so far, as for I am not completely finished it yet. I actually hate most if not all of it, and most will likely be changed or cut within the week, as I have already done a few times with the ideas.


Near scene 9 I was stuck on how to get him down within my ability to animate, and so far it's just a branch movement.
Also I plan to make the murder scene more dramatic.
Blarg I hate it so much!

Location and inspiration.

I figured I really wanted a feeling of non-survivability for Bard by himself, so to me that means mountains and Winter cold.

Lots of blues and snow, likely night time for most of the story.
I want to include the forest in the idea of a cliff as well, so I have been working on trying to figure out how to make a forest interesting enough. I am thinking a rather large pine tree/vine growing up and in the side of a cliff.
I have yet to get the right feeling in what I want it to be.
Reasoning for this is that I want to have Bard walking along a mountain path being all cold and sneezy and walks across one of the branches covered in snow and slips, only to be caught by the same tree slightly below dangling by a foot.

For the style of the backgrounds I was really thinking of playing with some Group of seven style, with the whole majesty and almost mythology of Canadian landscape.
http://www.groupofsevenart.com/gallery.html

As for the inspiration for the characters, D&D is the main source for it all. But with some spice from other places.
I want to get some of the same lighting feeling that the game Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess had.
Also right now I think it is a tab bit hard not to be inspired by Scott Pilgrim, due to the fact that he grew up in my home town.

That is all I can think of for the moment, other than I want to say thanks to my friends whom I have been bouncing ideas off of for this, specially Ka and Fuzz <3

Milestone 1 done!

Characters

The characters have taken a while to properly develop into what they need to be.
(names might change laterz)

Crow is a rather naive girl who has never ventured outside of her mother forest. She is curious and quick to grow attachments.
She is a forest Fae and can't stray far from the forest without becoming greatly sick. She is atuned with the forest and thus can manipulate it, as well due to her attachment with the forest she doesn't age like humans do.

Winter is the white raven. Forest is more of a spirit representation of the forest. Crow uses Winter to manipulate the forest. Winter is a mother figure to Crow, teaching her and guiding her, also punishing her when she does wrong.

Bard is a regular human, a musician who likes to travel from town to town. He is highly ambitious, and also quite the player.
He is not quite skilled at surviving harsh elements during his travels since he much prefers the city life with all of the city girls.

Dart is a guy who looks a lot like Bard, and is likely a descendant from bard. He is also a musician in a rock band, and likes to go for a strolls in the forest not far from his new cottage. Crow mistakes him for her long past lover, but Baird isn't too fond of her advances.

Here is a sketch of Dart with a colour test for Crow.
-Blue was too much like a certain movie for me, so I switched it over to a purple.
The visual differences between Dart and Bard will be more modern clothes on Dart. There is the jeans and belt which will be the main difference, maybe some headphones.

I was thinking that the fluff on Bard's neck is a hood, while on Dart it is just a modern faux-fur collar. Bard's coat will be a full winter coat, while Dart's will be a spring jacket.
Dart will likely also have lighter hair than Bard

Expressions YAY
I will post the location soon-ish... hopefully!

The Beginning

I am a 4th year Sheridan student and have decided to post my progress on my Final year Animation project in a blog. This animation has to be between 1-2 mins (closer to 1) which means that it will become a workload of over 720 full colour drawings.

I took quite a while to decide on my story and to which it got totally tossed out the window the first day of class.After some fretting I went with a backstory to a D&D character I only got to play one session with, named Miss Murder.

•She was a multiclass Druid/Sorceress who was cursed to live as a swarm of crows. Which lead to a lot of fun and interesting situations in the 5 hours I got to play her, but it was her backstory which I found much more interesting.

•I plan on doing this in a semi myth like style, like a grandmother would tell her visitors as a warning. I'll be conveying the story through visuals, little to no voice acting. Likely a poem like story overtop read out in Italian or Spanish.

Winter was approaching and pre-cursed!Miss Murder was tending to her forest's needs. While doing so she came across a Bard (tall handsome, but has no survival skill) horribly failing at putting up a shelter for the night.

     Miss murder took pity on him and brought him in for the winter, easily protecting him with her forest. Through their time together she fell in love with him. He knew this and when spring came he begged her to leave with him to the city, but she couldn't, being so intune with the forest she couldn't leave. So he left with the promise to bring back a golden band of union (a ring)

    She waited years, upon years for him to return, but he never did. Her connection to the forest allows her to have a much longer life than the people from the city.

    One day in early spring (while the leaves have yet to grow) a man came into her forest. He looked identical to the man she loved. She confronted him, worried about him and glad to see he was back. She became greatly hurt when he didn't recognize her.

     In her painful rage she murders the man, brutally.

     The forest grieves with angry rain.

     When she checks the man's body she notices that it wasn't her love. To punish her, the forest sent all of the crows inside it to eat her on the spot. But her willpower collected her consciousness into the crows so that she could seek redemption.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

•This is very rough, and will likely be reworked numerous times before the final animation is finished. I look forward to any suggestions that cal be passed this way!

(I will post more images+info on friday after I pitch this to my teacher on Thursday.)