Story boards - PLAN out your animation in advance
PLAN it with pencil and paper



  1. Email on Final Project and the Storyboard assignment that helps you prepare a few tentative ideas for it.

  2. LOOK AT THE FALL 2008 "Projects". 90% of them are very simple projects. DO NOT MAKE THIS A HUGE DEAL. Its just another assignment, but is a very open ended assignment.

    Most students from the fall 2008 Maya class did something with an animated, talented ball for their Fall 2008 final projects.

    You are welcome to steal ideas from the 3D Buzz videos!

  3. What is a storyboard? The following example is a simple example for a fairly typical final project form last fall that tries out some things learned in the class.
    
        Have you looked at the projects from the fall of 2008 Maya class?  
    
           All that most of them did was have a curtain that opened 
           up and showed some sort of very simple animation involving a 
           talented animated ball.
    
        PLEASE: Look at the projects from FALL of 1968 class for ideas.
    
     The STORY - The talented ball comes out from behind the curtains
                         and jumps over a short wall barrier or a hurdle of
                         some sort and then goes behind the curtains again,
                         after which they close.
    
     1.  The curtains are closed.  
    
     2.  The curtains open up, and they have a sway effect when they reach
         the fully opened state as taught by the 3DBuzz tutorials and
         demonstrated in class.
    
     3.  A ball is observed on the stage, and now it rolls out from behind
         the curtains to the front of the stage.
    
         A barrier or hurdle of some sort comes out on the stage either
         right before or right after the ball rolls out.
    
     4.  The ball squashes and stretches twice or perhaps three times in
         Anticipation of jumping over the "wall" hurdle.
    
     5.  The ball jumps over the "wall" and lands on the other side.
    
     6.  The ball rolls back behind the curtain.
    
     7.  The wall barrier the ball jumped over moves back behind the curtain.
    
     8.  The curtains close.
    
  4. This is the first ever storyboard that I did. It was done in January of 2009 for an online class exercise planning out an Adobe After Effects logo to be a 12 second introduction to a Maya 3D modeling animation film.

  5. Your storyboard can be done with pen or pencil and paper. It does NOT have to be done with Photoshop or any graphics software or any word processor.
    Story board
       - Sequence of drawings with descriptions - note the 12 descriptions on the 1st image above (numbered in RED).
       - Story-based description 
    
  6. Watch the following two 3DBuzz video tutorials and you will have a good grasp of storyboarding and storyboards. About 15 minutes of video total. Most students from the fall 2008 Maya class did something with an animated, talented ball for their Fall 2008 final projects. You are welcome to steal ideas from the 3D Buzz videos!
    Fundamentals Proj 1-1
          Overview of the Talented Ball   06:13
          Storyboards                     09:20
    

  7. Eh, lets head north to Canada, eh: Fundamentals of Computer Animation - The Production Pipeline gives the story boarding concept in context with the entire animation production process. See especially pages (slides) 10, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 of the PDF slideshow document.

  8. The Eyes Animation was also covered on April 15th today in class.

  1. Fall 2009 note: email088MayaNov9th2009.txt has more about storyboards, but also has two links to info about Lattices and how the ball could squeeze itself through a pipe.

    April 2009 note: emailStory.txt...

  2. Final Projects May 2009...

  3. Fall 2009 Maya projects: Study/critique these for ideas and inspiration.

  4. Maya to Adobe After Effects to Flash Video to Flash Application: we will go through this in class in early November, when we get After Effects in the StudioIT 1 ITTC 134 lab.

  5. Storyboard for a ball squeezing itself through a tunnel: Lattice deformations in Maya.