Just because animation is such an labour intensive field of work, animators tend to plan as much as possible. As in normal film productions, at first I have an idea which turns into a script which again turns into a storyboard. In best case I'd create an Animatic to check the story's developement and credibility. When I did this to the Orpheus script and storyboard, I found the story sometimes too slow and according to this, I deleted some ...well, 30 frames. This was very helpful and now I found it much clearer. Thanks to Celtx again.

When I did the first character designs I wasn't very happy with them. In fact, I wanted something completely different. But what? I had made this lovely Orpheus puppet and now I don't want to use it anymore. Then I my dear eFriend Shelley, Queen of Halfland reminded me of another helpful tool, the mood board or reference wall. The world is full of helpful tools...

"A mood board is a type of poster design that may consist of images, text, and samples of objects in a composition of the choice of the mood board creator. Designers and others use mood boards to develop their design concepts and to communicate to other members of the design team. The mood board may be used as a frame of reference during the design process in a variety of abstract disciplines.
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In short, mood boards are not limited to visual subjects, but serve as a visual tool to quickly inform others of the overall 'feel' (or 'flow') that a designer is trying to achieve. Creating mood boards in a digital form may be easier and quicker, but physical objects often tend to have a higher impact on people because of the more complete palette of sensations physical mood boards offer, in contrast with the black & white or color-prints of a digital mood board."

Read full article at Wikipedia, this text qoutes the page which was last modified on 2 June 2009 at 01:23.

Normally I collect my references in a small A5 scetchbook. After reading one of her posts and watching the related video I cleaned up my studio and emptied a wall to spread the visual references. I sticked the storyboard to it, too:


It's not as huge as Shelley's is (hers is stunning!) but releasing it from the book liberated my creative energy. Doing so I got a much clearer vision of what colours the different settings should be kept in, for example. And I found out how I would like to design the real world part which has bee an unanswered question so far. I decided that I'd like to combine a graphic look and puppet animation. I'm not sure if this'll work, but I'd like to give it a try.

A book could be hidden and ignored but it's hard to ignore a wall. So hopefully this would rise up the production speed a bit. Aunt Google's scrapbook is very helpful, as always. I also collect my ideas from books and magazines, from nature, from art catalogues and self-taken pictures as well.

There are a lot of different techniques to enlarge inspiration and your creative output, the mood boards are just one way. How do you do your research, from where do you get your inspiration from? I'd love to read your comments!

I can't believe it! I finally made it! It took such a long time but now the first edition of my orpheus' storyboard is finished! I remember that I started script writing in July 2007 when I had been in Bristol to do the model making course... And now, it's almost the end of 2008 and I finished the storyboard. But it was worth it I guess. I now have 150 frames and they make me feel very pleased.

The next step will be making an animatic from those pictures to get a feeling for the length of the final film and to talk to my musicians again... I'm really excited now. And I still can't believe it!

It was a bad week, I didn't finish the storyboard and I didn't get managed much for the film so far.
Okay, that's only true in parts: I've drawn a lot of wallpapers by hand because I want it to look not too perfect. I could have used the printer but that would look too clean. So I finished most of the interior of Orpheus' house but I didn't really feel comfortable with it. It is still too clean, I think. And the few missing details wouldn't change course. So I tried out some lightning to archieve a depressing mood, but that did not work as I wanted it to do. Sometimes I've got the strange feeling that I would never finish this film... But I hope not. My first animated film, "Ein anderer Traum", was made much more thougthless: I just wanted to do a film and I made one. Now, I want to do a much more professional film and this prevents me from keeping it simple. It stops me thinking about how I would do it....

I now know why people use to work in bigger teams: if you're are alone and do all the stuff by yourself, you couldn't concentrate on all the things with 100%. My head works like this: "Well, I must buy this and that and build this and don't forget ...what?" and by trying not to forget important stuff, I'll forget some really important stuff. Any unpaid trainees out there?

I finished another fifteen storyboard frames yesterday. I know about the importance of having a storyboard. But to me, that's the most annoying part of preproduction. I've got lots of beautiful pictures in my head how my film could and should be, how the different sets could look like. Then I take a pencil and a sheet of paper and find out that it won't work. This is soo annoying.... But ok: it isn't the worst case to find out early what I have to do in another way. I think that is one reason for storyboarding: getting disappointed as early as possible. Like all things in life it has two sides: I found out what won't work and I had to make decisions how to go on. And these decisions really made the difference to all this frustrating thoughts about "that looks boring... this was made by others earlier..." I had some nice ideas about set design and all that stuff and technical procedures. By drawing the storyboard I made decisions about the storyline, shortened the script a bit and made it more focussed. I went to the art and craft shop today and tomorrow I will try out the new ideas... Fifteen planned frames left to be drawn. I think I'll get up early tomorrow and see if I would have a good start at it...

Today I added some music websites to the link page. The first is soundsnap.com and the other one is mobygratis.com. Soundsnap.com is free database with thousands of free sound effects, loops and samples. Not everything is perfect there but if you do some research you can find very good things there. Moby, the american musician, DJ and producer, offers free music on his website. You're allowed to use for non-commercial projects. It is worth a glance.