CUNY Queens ︎ (ARTS241) Design 1

Knitting Circle: Animatics

Background

Animatics are a way of organizing a narrative idea into a structured video that will give the viewer a decent idea of what the final product will be. It is often used in frame-by-frame animation to get a better idea of timing, and in motion graphics to provide a good sense of the structure of the video before the more tedious or time consuming aspects of the animation are completed.

Although I did discuss this topic in class briefly before, I’m leaving this content here to stress that was an issue with the previous animation project (which was partly my fault for the name and framing of that assignment). I don’t think you really need a story to create an animation but having a structure in place an idea for how you will transition between scenes is helpful.

Resources

Here’s a decent tutorial for creating an animatic from drawn storyboards. It also shows a well organized After Effects document (both the Timeline and the Project window)

Examples

Here’s an animatic for a Gorillaz video. Note that the drawings are good but relatively unfinished, and the animation and additional transitions are relatively simple, the goal again is getting a sense of the timing relative to the song.

Here’s a deleted scene from Zootopia. Note the sophisticatedness of the imagery (compared to fully 3D), and similarly note the timing for the sound effects is already in place.

Lastly, here’s a very good example of a motion graphics piece in various states of finishedness.

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