I was asked to contact Rhys James to offer assistance on his second year film, catnip anonymous.
I was asked to review the animation to see that the story was clear, to read and give notes. I was also asked to research running scenes for visual development.
I feel I presented I wide range of action shots for the run scene. I Initally took references from live action film not animation to aid looking at the project from film language to see it hopefully in a fresh way rather than what other animators have done. If I knew a better way of organising and collecting the visual information/film and animation footage that I collected and more specific ideas of where to research (moving image) and how to archive/present then that would definitely be helpful for any future projects.
As I don’t fully understand how to read a storyboard I was unsure if a transition panel worked from scene to scene. It was confusing to me and I said this to Rhys . He took the time to explain the transition,which was very helpful. I’m really interested in doing storyboard work in the future so it was helpful to see the level of detail in the boards and how so much could be subject to change that it’s best to keep it simple.
Rhys asked me to then research cartoon chases, I went for quality and a wide style selection rather then quantity. I found a couple of international shorts that had both beautiful character acting and more interesting camera angles which I sent to Rhys.
I tried hard to initiate and communicate with Rhys from the start. I wrote a few initial notes on the whole story which at first I felt awkward sharing but Rhys was really receptive and I’m glad I flagged up a couple of visual points because that is the point of the visual development stage . If I don’t speak up now if I don’t understand something/questioning if something is working then it might causes issues/backtracking later on in the project.