So I've finally begun the animation process for my film. To me this is the best part and although it will take me a while since im doing majority of it all hand drawn, there will be such discipline while I perfect my craft. To get it out of the way and be done with, I decided to do the car sequences first. Drawing cars are not my thing and I can barely draw one just freestyle. I have to look at a picture closely and from all angles so that I can get a good rendering. Here are some pencil tests of the opening shot of the father and son driving towards the lake. I might have to re-shoot the first scene on 2's and change the size of the very first car and hold the pause of the car as its climbing up the hill.

So for my characters, I want the audience to follow them throughout the movie and get a feel for them. I would like if they had empathy for the trio( Allen, Tommy and the Monster). Whether they not exactly had the same experiences as these characters will have but I'm sure divorced parents and their kids will have a better understanding than those kids whose parents are still married. Allen is trying to patch things back up with his son Tommy who is having a difficult time dealing the seperation. If I wanted the two to come together again, what better way to have it with a monster in the forecoming. it might be a tad cliche, but to me I didn't care. Even though the audience might feel bad for the creature as he gets shot down, we really dont know his background at all. Why is he doing this? Was he a divorced child too? Or was he just plain hungry? But in the end as the father and son drive away in the distance, we go back to the lake where the beast has fallen in and zoom in closer. The water begins to ripple and splash and suddenly one of his arms appears and reachers to grasp onto the icy wreckage.

So when i do start my animation, I plan to give my characters a classic look. now when I mean classic, it's a take on the old school Disney, Warner Brothers character design. that doesn't mean that I'm going to be doing exaggerated facial expressions or have them suddenly burst into a musical tangent. I want them to have a believeable personality and have the audience care of what happens to them if things go wrong. I don't expect them to cry or anything like that but I want to have my three characters to have the viewers relate and have somewhat of empathy for them. it would be nice to have a good set of characters in my lineup to start off my filming career.

 here's a photo of the two driving up  towards the lake. now one thing i'll admit i'm not good at drawing cars, but it reads clear and that's what was all important for me. when i was creating the story at first i wasn't sure if i wanted any color at all in my movie and possibly go for a black and white montage to the classic cinemas in the early decades and dlassic horror films such as The Wolfman and Frankenstein and many more.

  her's a picture of the father and son fishing at the lake. its very detailed for a little storyboard sketch but i was in no rush at all. i wanted my boards to be very clear and precise so that the viewer(s) can read and understand every picture in my movie.

So to start off my adventure in making my first film, my appraoch is to get rid of the backgrounds out of the way. this way with all them completed, i can animate the characters and have them be porportionally correct in every scene. when we first watched my animatic in our class, i felt that my was alittle too long timing wise and figured that my teacher would want me to trim some scenes out. Actually, she said it was fine and that it was the dialouge that was not really neede. some lines were better off not being said at all and just have the characters play them out. So now here are some early layout picturews from my styoryboard from last year's spring semester in which i created my story.