Lego came to us to produce an animation to promote their new original toy line "Monster Fighters". We proposed a 2D approach that would be animated in Adobe After Effects. It was so well received that it was later split into two chapters and aired on Cartoon Network.
I started with presenting the look of the video with a series of style boards.
Style board of Lord Vampyre in his tricked out hearse.
Style board showing the design of Rathbone's diary.
Next up was storyboards. I was given a voice over script to work from. Other than a few specifics, it was up to me to craft the visual flow of the narrative.
I made sure to express all lighting and mood cues in these frames, which really helped when it came time to render the final artwork for animation.
When doing boards, you have to be mindful of both time and budget. Having a good sense of what your animators will have to go through to create the motion you are conveying is crucial for staying within budget. For instance, the train sequence above, we conceived a cost effective, yet visually exciting way to animate this scene.
Getting the design of a good visual joke within the boards is not only fun, but you can get the reaction to the
gag right away because you see it in context with the story.
gag right away because you see it in context with the story.
Once the boards were approved, we cut together an animatic using the frames to map out timing and pacing.
In addition to the feature animation, we animated a short journal piece for the bio page of each character. I started by supplying a texture map for the pages in the book.
Each bio had a custom layout for the character, as if written by Rathbone on his discoveries in the Monster realm.
