OUAN403 - Animation skill: Brief 2: Telling stories -Storyboarding review

This week was the first "crit" for the any kind of work I've received , and it was on the storyboard that was done for last week. On my part, the overall comments were pretty positive, complementing me on the visual quality, lighting and style of my storyboard, which is awesome because that is something that I was striving for. More importantly though, negative critiques focused on the inconsistent flow of the story scene-to-scene and the lack of movement indication ( another minor flaw would be the the 18-frame limit that was crossed ). On reviewing the critiques, I found that all of them made a excellent point, as I did put much of my movement indication ( cameras, characters ,...) in text below rather than on the screen itself ( there was white arrows but they were indeed a bit obscured ). That would probably make it easier and clearer for the animators to work from, and having tasted the hardship of animating, I'd probably appreciate that greatly. The point on the the flow of story is also good as I did have to fast-forward some scene to keep up with the pace of the rhyme, (especially clear during the transition between the stile and the pet shop ).With that in mind , probably in the future, I should take more into consideration the speed of the narrations if they are presented as to have more fluidity to my story. However there was one critique that I disagree : "Could do with more colours". The monotone theme that I chose served 2 purposes: first is to simplified the storyboarding process, having not to think about colour composition in order to focus more on movement and characters , hence enabling me to produce scenes more efficiently. Second is for the gritty, dark style/theme of the animation itself .So in the end, I fail to see the need to add more colours.

As for others, I found myself giving out a balanced set of critiques, with some of the work being very cool and unique ( the silhouetted dove in particular ). More importantly though I've managed to acquire a set of "guild lines" that my critiques can be placed upon, which would not only help me to judge the works of other but myself also !