By Celeste Arguello
Storyboards are an integral part in any visual storytelling. It allows you to understand what shots you need, from what angles, and how you want them to move. Artists may take a script and translate it into a storyboard or skip directly from an idea to the visuals. Dreamworks offers a few tips from their style guide to help creators make dynamic shots and help understand where your key images are in space and in relation to others.
Animatics take storyboards a step further by setting these shots to motion. A rough animated sketch could really help the members of the production understand exactly how shots flow into each other or help express difficult movements that would be confusing on paper alone.
Animatics have grown popular in fan communities specifically, taking characters from established media and telling stories through music from either the same or alternate sources. It’s a good way for fans to share their ideas without having to spend the production costs for a fully rendered scene.
Here for example, they used basic shapes for both the characters and their surroundings, and only included the essential parts of the background, as drawing too many details may become confusing in this sketch style. There are a few shots that keep appearing with slight differences to better show the change happening in between. The fight cuts much quicker between shots, showing more varied angles, depth, and closeups compared to earlier in the scene. It makes use of some of the tips listed above too, using over the shoulder looks, items at different levels in view, cutting on relevant lyrics or action, and making full use of the area by allowing Seam the cat to travel through the depth of the scene on multiple occasions. They keep faces off centered and looking to one side of the camera, or in one particular case, looking at the camera as Jevil, the smaller creature, crouches threateningly.
From the get go, you can tell their cuts are motivated by the music and they fit very well, as especially seen when the song gets more intense and the visuals must step up to keep pace. The main character, Frisk, travels from the right side of the screen to the left, showing them reverting to a dangerous and hurtful path away from what is right. Arrows help clarify the motion throughout. At one point they included a grid to clarify the distance Frisk stands in an over the shoulder shot. As a primarily black and white animatic, they make use of shading and spots of color to portray meaning or draw attention to key elements. The shot where Frisk screams up to the heavens is probably my favorite because the music is building up to this and you can feel it with the dark tendrils wrapping about both them and Chara in the background, and this shot just shows so wonderfully that breaking away. You can tell this is a turning point and the low angle makes the movement even more grand.
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