Storyboard task

I have really struggled with this task, I don't know if it is that I already know how I want to make my animation, if it is the composition of my book or if I am unable to look past simple movements in animation. I have made all the roughs based around 2 characters and a landscape. The constraints of vertical and lateral movement and my want to make the movements of the characters make sense within the narrative have meant all my storyboards a very simple. To make the storyboard up to 9 frames I have drawn almost every movement instead of key moments. In my final animation I want the camera to pan across the entire concertina book composition and this story boarding exercise has helped me to understand how that could work. I could try and time the panning background so that the character walking or running will remain in the centre of the frame, making sure the capture the attention of the viewer. I think it can be easy to get lost while animating in after effects and lose sight of the composition in each part of the animation as the movement takes attention. Storyboarding helps to break down each part of the animation and act as template to work to. Because of the panning shot I want to use for my animation timing will be key, characters will be continuously appearing at one side of the composition and disappearing off the other side. I don't want to miss any important parts of the narrative or confuse them by having two going on at the same time at different sides of the screen. I think preparing a storyboard for the animation will help me to keep focus on these key moments, it may mean making some alterations to the original book to make it work so planning will be a necessity to make sure I keep the same emotion and narrative.

These are two of the storyboards I have made. Its easy to see looking back at them now that the simplicity of the movements means they have almost become a flick book taking the animation frame by frame. So in summary, I have not enjoyed struggling with the constraints of this task but I do see the need for storyboarding and will be making a storyboard of key moments for my animation concentrating on composition to help me communicate the narrative of my book. I think the difficult part of this animation may not be when the characters are central in the composition but how to manage them as the pan on and off the screen.