Character Animation (Pre Production)

For this project we were given a 10 second clip of audio and we had to create a character and animate them to the audio clip.
Fist off was the pre production. This included creating the character and deciding who they are, what they do and how they are feeling during this scene. This also included thubnailing and story boarding the clip, along with animatics. (and of course filming video reference)
The planning is really important to me. I honestly don't think I could produce anything without a lot of planning first. I keeps my brain happy and in order.

These are a few sheets from my character pre production. I had a fair few sheets of work for this as I wanted to create and understand the characters personality and motivation for the clip. Even though it was just an 11 second clip, I find it really useful when it comes round to the acting part of the animation.

 I enjoyed coming up with a character, though I was restricted with my sound clip. I had to go for a type of character im not really used to, nor a fan of drawing. In the end I was happy with my concept and was excited to start planning his animation.
I first scribbled a load of rough ideas down just as a sort of visual brain storm. From there I would be able to show others what I was thinking and see what was working best.
After initial planning I went in with more detailed ideas but still rough planning.

I found coming up with ideas for my dialogue was quite difficult as its not a particularly emotion filled clip. I felt massive movements and gestures would not fit right with the clip and thubnailing subtlety was a challenge. I had to push some poses just so it was readable.

After I filmed video reference and then drew up some final storyboards. I tried to capture some of my natural gestures in my final story boards. Again, they were subtle but as long as the general idea and timing was there, then they would be useful for my animation. I also turned them into an animatic to finalize some of the timings and to show others to see if it will work.

I was quite happy with my idea after pre production although it took me a while initially. I looked forward to including the little gestures and getting into the acting of the scene. I like pre production because it sets me up with a solid idea with the animation, but because this was the first project of the year where we were back to animating, I just wanted to get stuck in.