What I chose to make for prototype 1 was a storyboard. I chose to make a storyboard because I figured that getting the idea for the progression of the animatic down on paper is the most important thing to do. It’s the most important part of the process because it allows for other people to view the ideation that has been going on as well as make their own insights into the progression of the animatic. While making the storyboard, I began to think about the specifics of scene transitions, music, coloration, value, and voice acting. From the advising session last week, I decided to make the storyboard a lot more clear in terms of lines and where I think the shadows, camera, and movement is going to be.
Toon Boom Storyboard is a software that was also brought up in terms of technical advice, and after looking into it a little this previous week I have decided to use it to make the final product. I choose to do this because I believe it to be better for storyboarding and animation than my current art program that is more suited to comics and short gifs. Toon Boom is also used by huge companies like disney, warner bros and nickelodeon and while I am not looking to work for those companies, it is always good to get familiar with an industry standard program through thesis.
What I hoped to learn through prototype 1 was if any scenes could be added, what transitions would be best, how lighting could work into the scenes, and if one long monologue would be better than simple dialogue scenes in-between/after the monologue. What I also hoped to learn was how my style of artwork would develop or grow from this project and how color could work into this (saturated vs unsaturated).
My current working title is “After the Fact” and it is set in a futuristic dystopia in which central city’s police are in need of reform despite the fact that some police officers are not corrupt and actually trying to do the right thing in other precincts, the ones in central city will more readily fall to greed and fame rather than see what’s staring them right in the face. This is learned by our protagonist, the hard-boiled detective Dylan Garret who quit the police force on his own terms before they could bring something up against him that would get him fired. He figured it was a black mark on his record either way. He set up his own detective agency to gather the adequate funds and resources to go after the person who made his life a living hell, the vixen. In this excerpt of a much larger story, we see him reflecting on the past in his darkened office at dusk even if one could not tell due to the green, shining lights of central city. I will be coming up with a different name other than central city in the future but that is the working title. Already I have incorporated elements of film noir and cyberpunk as I said I would, as well as current issues that will more than likely be present at the time of the thesis show whether it be in person or not. The story is told through a series of two flashbacks and a digital copy of the crime file on the detective’s personal data storage device which he had been lucky to keep the files before he left the force. At the end of the animatic, it is actually the vixen that comes to talk to the detective but the audience is left with a fox-like upper torso behind his door.
What I hope to improve by the time the project is done: my depictions of female anatomy and my art skill in general so that it doesn’t look like hot garbage, my skills with writing characters and scriptwriting. My understanding of perspective in a 2D space from extreme camera angles.
I hope this to be different from the current media as while it does play on the tropes of the genres included, everyone’s take on the genres are different. Mine is different because it does actually give some slack to the police force in that they are lumped together as some kind of incompetent or hostile group and it has the femme fatale immediately fucking over the protagonist, not a slow burn. A tale of revenge is also not common in film noir, at least from what I’ve seen.