I just finished the animatic for the 30 second intro for “What a Prikk”. I think it came out very well and believe it will make a great intro!
So how exactly does someone make an animatic?
After you have a script written, whether you have audio or not, you need to have storyboards. Storyboards are images, like in comic books that tell the story visually. It is used so that the animators know what to animate, as well as giving the producer, or director or anyone working on the production an idea of what the cartoon will look like when it’s done. Animatics are very important parts of production. It helps time everything out and keeps it organized.
Typically storyboards are drawn on paper and then scanned into the computer. For What a Prikk, to save myself time, I’m doing something alittle different.
My process was first writing a script. After I got the script nailed down, I’d send it to the voice over artists. They would return with their audio files and i’d check to make sure everything came out well. After that I import the audio files into flash. I’m using flash for the animatic because in flash you can have a layer of audio, and a layer underneath where you can draw. This way, you draw the storyboards WHILE you time the animatic! It saves a whole lot of time and is much faster than scanning in storyboards, then timing them.
Since I’m going to be animating this myself, I know exactly what I’m going to animate from the drawings. It’s important that if you have someone else animating, the storyboards should be very detailed! Keep the drawings clean, and the action detailed…The animator shouldn’t have to constantly ask what’s happening in the animatic.
After the animatic is done, I export it as a .mov file. Then with quicktime pro I cut up each scene into separate movie files. Remember, a scene is every time the camera changes. In the animatic above, there are 3 scenes. The earth, the guy and then nuclear poweplant. I import each scene into it’s own flash file so that I can keep my computer running at optimum speed, as well as not having enormous flash files. After I animate ( which i’ll show you how I do when I do it) I export each scene and then re-combine them in quicktime.
So now, please enjoy this extremely short clip of the beginning of the intro. The stick figure is just a place holder for the to-be character. I did that so I could save time when making the animatic. Also, I cut it at the point right before it gets a little…doodie dirty! By the way, that’s Prikk narrating 
More to come soon!
Steve
video © 2008 Stephen M. Levinson.
What a Prikk products HERE or HERE! I’d appreciate anyone’s interest in the products to help me fund my low budget ( but not low quality ) “What a Prikk” pilot! It would mean alot to me!
