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Hello, everyone.

Havtza here.

Now that we're finished with the pre-production

and have a better understanding

of animation and camera movement,

it's time to move to the last section of the course,

making an independent animation from start to finish.

In this section,

I'm going to teach you how I make my own animation

with my iPad as my main work station

using FlipaClip and Procreate.

These softwares are not very usual in the animation field,

and in fact they lack a lot of features.

But the techniques that I'm going to teach you are applicable

to any other type of animation software

as long as you have an animation feature and onion skin

and layer blending modes.

Some parts of the production

can also be made by any other type of software

even without these features,

or they can even be done by hand on paper.

Today's lesson can be done with any type of medium,

and we'll be focusing on storyboards.

The storyboard is usually the first step in animation production,

also really any type of video production.

When working with a team, or presenting an animation to a possible client,

the first step is having a storyboard.

The storyboard is used as a reference

for your team, your client, and for yourself

so that everyone is on the same page

about the composition, movement and timing of everything

in your animation.

In essence, this is the way to show

the most information

with the least amount of work involved.

This might sound easy

because technically the amount of work is much lower

than making the entire animation.

But without a good storyboard,

the people working on your team

will have a hard time understanding the project,

and it can also help you keep track

on your project in independent animation as well.

This job also has a lot of responsibility attached to it

because everything else will be done based on the storyboards.

So if they're bad, you might derail the entire project.

The first thing you're going to need is, of course, the storyboard template.

This is a template which is composed of black frames

in the correct aspect ratio of your video,

meaning that you have the right proportion of your canvas for each frame.

And you also need a short line below each frame

for you to describe action, camera movements and speaking line

for each part of your storyboard.

You can either get the template from the Internet

or create your own based on what you need for your aspect ratio.

If you're only using them for independent production,

you can just sketch your frames by hand.

This is also good for when you have unusual composition and layouts

as we're going to see later on.

To create a storyboard,

we first need to understand

the several most commonly used shot within the industry

and for when and what purpose are they used.

There are two main categories of shots.

One is a category of the subject distance from the camera

and the second is the camera angle.

In the distance category we have the establishing shot.

This shot is the furthest away from the camera

and focus on the entire environment.

It shows the entire location of the scene from a neutral perspective

so that your audience can understand

where everything is taking place

and the relative location of everything on set.

Traditionally you will draw this establishing shot

as the first frame in your storyboard sequence

to make it obvious for you and your audience and your team

where everything is taking place within the scene.

It is acceptable that after you draw this shot once,

you leave any subsequent frames from the same angle blank

to focus on the changing action of your characters,

as long as the composition and camera angle

don't change too much throughout the scene.

That being said, in independent animation

where you are the only artist on the team,

you might not need to have a full establishing shot,

as you already know all the details yourself

and might not feel like you need it

if you're not actually going to use it in your animation.

This can still be used as a reference for your client,

so it might depend on what purpose you're making it for.

The next shot type in the distance category

are shots that only show parts of your subject.

You have the full shot

which shows the entire body of your character.

A medium shot,

which generally shows a closer view of the body from the waist up

and lets you focus more on the face

while still keeping the character fairly distance from the camera.

A close shot will focus on the face much more,

while also keeping part of the upper body in view.

This shot allows both clear expression and body acting

without creating awkward compositions.

And extreme close shot will focused mainly on the face

without any additional body parts,

or on specific parts of the face shot,

such as the eyes or the mouth.

These shots give special attention to the details in the expression

and work well with subtle micro acting.

The general close up shot

will focus on any other body part or object

which is important for the narrative of the scene,

to which you want to give special attention

or show additional details

that are important for the audience to know.

These distances are part of a range

and can be relatively closer and further away

depending on the composition of the scene.

The only rules to them is not cut your characters on a joint,

because it creates awkward framing and movement with animation.

The next category of shots

relates to the angle of the camera in the environment,

and the dynamics between the objects in the scene.

An up shot looks at your subject from below

and will give the object a sense of grandeur.

With the most extreme version of the up shot

being the 'worm eye view'

which is looking at the object from the floor.

These types of shots usually use extreme perspective

and actually deform your character model quite a lot.

As we've seen with the perspective animation lesson,

this might mean that your entire prospective

is going to be shifted and deformed as needed,

depending on the effect that you want to have within your scene.

The down shot is the opposite of the upshot

and it looks on your subject from above.

This is usually used to emphasize the smallness of a character

with the most extreme version of it being the 'bird's eye view',

which is looking at your subject directly from above.

But it can also be used to show some details

that are not possible to view from a regular angle

or that they are possible to view

but they don't have the right emphasis.

Again, this type of shots might use distorted perspective

to enhance the overall purpose of the shot.

An over the shoulder shot

is positioned behind and slightly above your character

and will emphasize the face of one character

or the details in the environment

while obscuring the face of the character that we're following

These types of shots create depth and can have interesting dynamics

between characters and object in the environment.

Using the size imbalance of different objects on your screen,

you can actually show some narrative points with the positioning

and staging of your characters and object themselves.

The two shot is a shot which usually gives equal emphasis

to both objects in a frame.

These shots tend to be quite flat-looking

as opposed to the over-the-shoulder shots

and might need additional background details

or interesting composition and body language

to make them look more appealing.

On the other hand,

they are pretty useful to show emotions and interactions between characters

as well as give some symmetry to certain scenes

and are very useful, especially when making abstract animations.

The two shots also have additional frames

which use the same type of composition

of adding equal emphasis on different subjects.

But the name will change

depending on the number of subjects within the scene.

So three objects will be a three shot,

multiple objects will be a group shot, etc.

The last type of shot in this category is the POV shot

which stands for Point of View.

These are seen from the characters perspective,

and depending on the narrative in the scene

and the character's position,

we can have many different moods

and atmospheres to them.

This type of shots are usually using

the track in and track out composition and camera movements

and actually can be quite difficult to recreate

because we're going to make

somewhat random abstract movements

depending on the actions that the character is performing.

I haven't really covered it in the camera lesson,

but basically,

this is just an extreme version of using both track in or out

as well as these track follow techniques.

And you might even need to use

additional perspective pens to create certain effects

depending on your character positioning and actions within the scene.

Basically, a POV shot is just an exercise in camera movement.

A good storyboard will only contain the relevant information

which is needed for the team, client and yourself

to understand the idea behind each shot and movement.

When creating a storyboard,

you would want to have variation between the shots

in a way that both engages and emphasizes

the point of the scene or sequence

and allows your audience to understand

what is happening throughout it.

This is achieved by the staging of your scene.

You need to make sure

that the important information is presented clearly.

This can be done

by changing the position of the object in the environment,

making the composition

which draws the eyes of the viewer to the focus point

or use dynamic lighting in your scene

to emphasize certain parts of it.

When creating your storyboard,

you want to make sure that you're choosing the optimal view

for the subject of your animation

and emphasize the idea of each shot as clearly as possible,

while also keeping the entire sequence

varied, engaging and aesthetically pleasing with good flow

as we've learned in the last lesson.

Following the guidelines for editing in the cuts,

you need to express the dynamics

between the character or any type of object in the scene correctly.

In this example,

you can see that we have two variations for each sequence.

One which uses standout and somewhat boring shots,

which although they convey the idea in a way that we can understand,

they don't look very dynamic

and don't emphasize the point of the scene quite as clearly.

Basically by using flat compositions,

with a somewhat blend staging of the characters and blend acting,

we do understand the scene,

but it doesn't look quite as impressive or have quite the same impact.

In this first shot,

I want to make the characters seem like they're gossiping

so I'm going to use the expressions

and the body language of the character

to make it seem like one character is being shocked by what she's hearing

while the other is talking while having bad intentions.

So by focusing more on their expressions,

I can show this body acting more clearly,

as opposed to just having the character

seen from longer distance and missing all those smaller details.

In the second shot,

I want to make the other girl which is the subject of the gossiping,

look like she's very sad and was hurt by the gossiping.

This time,

instead of focusing on the character expression,

I want to create a variation

in both distance and the depth of the scene

while emphasizing the powerlessness of the girl.

So in this case, I'm

going to take advantage of the down shot

and make the characters seem like she's smaller

and use clear body language to show that she's sad

and is outcasted from the rest of the group.

Also, pay attention to how I keep the continuity

by placing on the side of the screen

where the characters are looking at in the previous shots.

This helps us keep track of the movement and the point of focus

while switching between different types of shots and different subjects.

In the last shot,

I want to show how the gossiping girls are caught

and are being yelled at by the friend of the bullied girl.

The important part is the friend

which is a new character

so instead of using a three shot

which has equal emphasis on all three characters

and it's also somewhat flat

and doesn't show clear dynamics between the characters,

I chose to use a combination of an over-the-shoulder shot with an up shot

Making the composition more appealing and interesting

gives more depth to the shot,

and also shows clear dynamics of power and importance

for the characters in the scene.

This also lets us play around a little bit more

with the body language and expressions of the characters,

because we can see them more clearly

as opposed to just having them all in a straight line.

In general, you can see

that by changing the angles and distance of your camera between each shot,

we have a more dynamic sequence with more impact.

Changing the shot types allows us to have

a more energetic scene overall

as the focus point of each shot will shift in position.

Giving the overall scene its on flow

as opposed to keeping at the point of focus static on the screen.

You do need to be careful to keep the point of focus

moving in a smooth flow between each shot though.

Because bouncing it around might make it difficult for your audience

to understand what is going on, if you're using quick cuts.

In this storyboard,

you can see how using varied expression and body language

can make your scene look more dynamic and engaging,

as opposed to just relying on simple expressions,

or simple positioning.

Now that we know the base composition of the shots,

we want to give them more life and make them more dynamic

by using camera movements.

We've already learned

how to create the camera movements in a previous lesson,

but now we'll see how to represent them in the storyboard itself.

Each camera movement has its own symbol,

which is usually conveyed by arrows

that dictate both the camera movement type

and its direction.

These arrows will be drawn

between the first and last frame of the camera movement

with the movement drawn on the storyboard itself

and sometimes we have written notes

such as when to use slow in and slow out

or the duration of the entire shot.

The first and most basic move is the pan,

in which the camera moves in a straight line in one direction on the screen,

in a constant or changing speed while employing the ease in or ease out motions.

This type of smooth movement can be in any direction

without affecting the actual technical process of the camera,

as we've seen in the camera movement lesson.

But by drawing your background with different layouts and perspective,

you can either achieve a follow tracking shot

or a perspective changing shot.

Like we've learned in the camera movement lesson,

you'll have to draw the correct perspective for each part of your storyboard.

So as you can see here,

because we have connecting frames

between each part of the storyboard,

it looks like I have a complete layout,

but depending on the length of the entire shot,

you might need to change the layout and make it even longer

to fit the duration or action of your characters throughout the shot,

and this is the job of the actual layout and background artists.

You don't need to make sure that your entire layout is connected

between each separate frame in the storyboard.

The next type of camera movements

are the zoom in and out and the track in and out.

Although the technique to achieve each of them is similar

done by enlarging and shrinking your background image,

the final result will look different.

With the zoom in technique,

the character itself will change its size

in the same rate as the background,

giving the impression of the camera changing lenses and focal points

to enlarge the details without the camera changing position in the environment.

In the track in or out option,

the character size will stay the same,

giving the impression that the camera and the character

are both moving in a 3D environment.

In each case,

the final and initial frame will be done inside the base frame,

with an additional arrow indicating the type of movement

and the start and finish frame

indicated in the corner as to not to confuse the compositors later on.

You need to make sure

that you are labeling your starting and ending frames correctly

within the frames of the storyboard

because later on,

when you're going to export the smaller frames into actual animatics,

you want to make sure that you know which frame is correct.

So in order not to cut that information out,

you need to draw that inside the actual frame.

The third type of camera movement is a combination

between the previous two movements,

meaning that you have a movement both on the x axis

where you have the track on the pan shots

and the y axis

where you have the zoom and track in and out shot.

To show that on the storyboard

you can either make an arrow

and draw the frames in the actual template

if the composition allows it

or you might need to create a completely different layout

if the path of the movement is not clearly understood

with the storyboard template.

This is usually the case

where you have some wheeled track follow shots,

which requires a lot of movement

in many different directions in the environment.

Another type of camera movement is the rotating camera.

It can be achieved by using a similar technique to the pan movement,

with an overlay moving in the opposite direction of your background,

and it will be indicated by a spinning arrow

or by in arrow direction on the storyboard itself,

accompanied by writing.

Once you have your template, your narrative, and your camera works,

it's time to create your actual storyboard.

The storyboard itself serves two purposes.

The first is to understand the technical aspects of each shots.

The layout, composition, lighting and atmosphere of each frame

and how they'll connected with camera movements.

The second is to have an overall view of your sequence

and to see if your narrative and continuity holds up and works

between different types of shots.

For these purposes,

you would want to create a new frame

for each big change in your character action or camera position.

You want to make sure that the movement

between shots and cuts is clearly linked.

There needs to be a reason

why we moved for one cut to the other,

otherwise your audience might get disoriented,

since they wouldn't know why a cut occured

and might have some difficulty focusing on the correct subject of the new shot.

When changing shots between cuts

that have the same subject in them,

you need to have connected movements between each cut

so that there is a feeling of continuation of the movement.

When switching subject between shots,

you want to make the change motivated.

You need to show the interactions of the subjects before the cut,

otherwise you might risk making it

look like you've changed the scene between shots.

Because there wouldn't be clear interactions

or indications of the subjects being in the same environment,

even though they should interact and be aware of each other.

Every new frame within the storyboard will need to contain a depiction

of your layout and composition within the shot,

while keeping the characters' relative heights,

interactions and movement consistent and connected.

You will also need to give the environment details

and lighting consistent with your camera work.

So if you're switching points of views or angles,

you need to make sure

that the environment details are in the correct positions

with the correct lighting directions on them.

This relates to the 180 (degree) rule

that we've talked about in a previous lesson.

When using a traditional sheet template view,

it's better not to draw the background from scratch for each frame,

because the squiggling of the background

will distract from the character movement.

But if you're creating a storyboard animatic with a digital software

that display the action on top of the background,

it's better to leave the background in

in order to avoid a blinking effect

when actually viewing it as an animatic.

If you are going to use your backgrounds with the animatic,

it's important to clearly show your general lighting and values within the scene

to make sure that your team understand

the vision, mood and atmosphere for each shot

and keeps it correct when trying to animate or create backgrounds.

On the description line below,

you can describe both the character and camera movements

associated to each frame.

You also need to use clear arrows

to show the direction of your character actions in the scene.

For my project,

I actually only create one frame of each scene

in the storyboard template format.

While making the rest of the storyboard

with the correct timing, camera movements and character acting

within a separate file in an animatic format.

I actually do it

because it's easier to later export and work on the storyboard

with multiple software on the iPad with the animatic format

as opposed to just exporting each frame in the storyboard template format individually

and later adjusting the timing with the animation software itself.

I still use the template format

to make it easier to see the overall story

and how each shot connects to the next one,

as well as seeing that they make a good flow

with the actual focus points in each shot.

This is also easier to make

when trying to come up with ideas for a new project

because you can see the entire story with one look.

The template also makes it easier

to make changes to the base composition of each shot

in a way that is connected

to the other shots in the sequence.

When creating my own storyboards,

you can see that sometimes I make changes

between this storyboard in the template

and the actual animatic version.

With the bigger canvas of the animatic versions,

I can make more detailed and precise compositions with the background,

which are later going to be used as a base for our actual background,

because these are essentially the thumbnails

that are going to be used to later create the background

the same way that we did in the first background lesson.

And also, because this time,

I'm actually going to try and capture the character movement

within the storyboard itself,

meaning that I need to create

both the background and the characters on separate layers,

and that the overall composition of the single frame

that I've done in the template

might not be kept throughout the entire animation in each shot

because the character itself is going to move and change the composition.

However, this type of animatic

is important for the timing aspect of the animation

because in the actual storyboard template,

we don't have the possibility to show it at all.

So in this case,

you need to basically break down the movement

to what you want it to be

and match it to the length of the shot.

In this case, you're just going to draw

the most basic and important frames

for the creation of the movement

and try to hold them for the correct amount of time

using the frame delay feature in Procreate.

This is also why I like creating my storyboard animatics

in Procreate as opposed to FlipaClip

because it is much easier to duplicate frames

and hold them for the correct amount of time

without it taking too much work.

Because in FlipaClip, we don't actually have a hold feature.

It is also easier to create the atmosphere of the scene

using the built in soft brushes.

The animatic also lets you play around with camera movement

because you're basically creating a very rough approximation

of what type of animation you want to have.

And it is quite easy to play around

with the 'object transformation tool' in Procreate

because the quality of it is kept for a lot longer

than the 'transformation tool' in FlipaClip,

You also have more variations with your object transformation

so sometimes, just squishing or deforming your object a little bit

will be enough to indicate the type of movement that you want to create

instead of just having to draw it from scratch for each frame,

as you would need to make in FlipaClip.

Basically,

each type of storyboard method has its own strengths and weaknesses.

The regular template lets you see

the compositions of each shot and the entire sequence,

which helps you see

what possibilities you have to enhance your narrative,

create a good flow between each shot,

and make sure that your story and cuts

are understandable to the audience.

While using the animation format

lets you have more details and an actual understanding

of the timing and changes in composition

that are created by the movement of the characters.

The exercise for this lesson is to create your own storyboard

based on your character and background designs from the last video.

Try and see how you can create a narrative and a flow

using your existing animations and angles

and see how you can improve them.

Start with your storyboard format as a still image

and then move on to create your storyboard in animatics.

Make sure that you make your entire video 5 seconds or less.

And if you're a beginner, make it 3 seconds or less

because we're going to be working on this video

for the entirety of the last section.

When creating your storyboards and animatics,

make sure that your line quality is clear

and that your perspective is correct, even if not precise.

You want to make sure that understand what's going on in your frame,

even with it being small in size.

Also, when creating your storyboard,

make sure that you're not actually animating.

Just create the important poses and ideas behind each scene

and hold them the necessary amount of frames

for the animatic.

To recap,

today we learned about the purpose of the storyboard

in the production, various types of shots

and the effects on the scene atmosphere dynamics

between the characters and subjects,

how to make your storyboard

more appealing and fitting to your idea,

and how I specifically do this stage in my production,

as well as the strengths and weaknesses

of each type of storyboarding method.

Next time

we're going to learn the different techniques

I used to make the storyboard into actual animation,

as well as some exporting and importing methods between softwares.

Thank you for watching and see you next time.

Bye.