As previously stated, I’m going to be giving love to Grosvenor Lane Ghost in the form of an animation. I’ve learnt a lot from the Bullet, and from Adaptation, about the sound, about the music, about vectors and rasters and paths.
Making a plan
It all starts with a plan. I made a story-board for the Bullet, likewise for Adaptation, and I think that helped a bunch. I could see what I needed to make / draw / record.
What I didn’t see was exactly how much was involved in each scene. This is because my plan wasn’t fine-grained enough: “Brother Holland in the bathtub” doesn’t capture all that was eventually required to make that scene. So, too, “Crabman in front of building” or “Assault on Sanitation Facility”.
Sure, it helped break things down into manageable chunks, but each of those chunks was broken down on the fly. OK, I’ve worked like that before. Sometimes there are just unknowns. It’s a fact of life. However, if I sit and think about each scene, I can picture each bit that is necessary:
“Oh, I’ll need a sniper’s scope. And figures in uniform. And a background. And waymarkers. And text.” Right. That’s a whole lot more concise.
To ease the production, I’ve taken the story board, made scenes and, for each scene, detailed the rough time (it’s very loose at the start), the voice-overs, the sounds, the backgrounds and the props required.
And I came up with this:
Scenes on the left, assets on the right. And from here I can pick and choose the bits I need to make. Only got twenty minutes left on lunch? Make a differential thermometer. Have a couple of hours to spare, crank out the laboratory scene. Got a quiet (Yeah. Right) room? Record some voice-overs or sounds.
I’ll not working from start to finish, rather it’ll be a bit of this and a bit of that as I can fit it in. In an ideal world, I’d like to concentrate on one thing at a time. In a real world, that ain’t going to happen.
Besides, with technology today, I can work on (most) of these things during lunch, before bed, between dodging telemarketing calls or while watching tv.
Cool, Jez. What’s first?
Ha. Ha ha. Haaaaaa. Yeah. Meat or potatoes, right? Well, you know what? I’m going to have a little fun and start with the music. That’s right, I’m skipping to dessert.
Why? Because it’s fun. Really. It sets the mood for the pictures to come. And I think it’s important to have background music for a video rather than just sound. Not only that, if I’m going to make a bunch of these (one for each book in Paranormology), then I’ll want to have a ‘theme’ going, a tune that is associative with the series, not just the book.
Which means making a ditty. And since MIDI is such a wonderful way for a single shmuck to make music, and considering I already have Virtual Midi Synth installed, I’m going to go bury myself in my earphones.
Look out, Anvil Studio, here I come!