After spending about a week solely working on modelling and vis dev we decided to have another look at the story with fresh eyes. After watching the film again on the bigscreen we decided to try and liven the whole story up and have some more fun with it.
After writing down some important story notes we wanted to stick to we then grabbed the whiteboard markers and began storyboarding out the whole story again:
Thumbnailing out random ideas and gags we were able to boost different parts of the story. It seems obvious but this process of scribbling drawings out in the open so we can all see them was so useful. It made it obvious which parts dragged the pacing or which parts wouldn't cut together very well. This isn't to say we weren't drawing out the story before but having it on display like this and being able to change parts around instantly was very helpful and refreshing.
This draft of the story has ended up being our 10th draft of the film...STORY IS HARD
But by now we can see why big animation companies spend such a long time on story. Not only is it super hard to do but also everything hangs off the story so it requires an awful lot of time and effort. Hopefully we've made some progess....
