Return to Creatin'

After a wee bit of frustration, I finally passed the first big hurdle in my return to working on the animatic. I decided this time to copy Bill Plympton and make my film in the 16:9 aspect ratio instead of my usual 4:3. Here's some visuals so you know what I'm talking about (and please excuse the "dummies" part, I borrowed this image from this site):



In other words, I'm designing this for the type of t.v. most people own…except for me! I'm guessing that most folks have some sort of a widescreen t.v. I, on the other hand, am quite content with my old skool CRT t.v. Why? Because I'm too busy CREATING to be CONSUMING! And when you're consumed with creating, there's no time to watch every freakin' stupid show on television! I make an occasional exception for streaming episodes of "Fastlane" from Netflix while I'm eating ( we all have guilty pleasures!) and an occasional movie on the weekend…BUT THAT'S IT!!! "Adult Toy Story" MUST get done within the next 6 months so I can work on the next film and the next film and the next.

Back to using Storyboard Pro: when I selected "HDTV" as my new file format and imported storyboard images that I had sized properly—I thought—the images were too big for the allotted area. I couldn't figure out why this was happening. It's annoying and time-consuming to fix it manually; when I import my drawings, they should automatically fit the frame size. Finally, I selected another option for my file, "HDTV_vertical." I assumed that I didn't want anything vertical but tried it anyway and SURPRISE! It worked! I'll have to dig deeper and learn exactly what the issue was. This issue might be a good entry for my storyboarding ebook.

Although it will chew up time, I'm considering starting with a rough animatic, then creating a more "presentable" one. Since I was away from this program for about 3 months, I've almost completely forgotten how to use it. I feel that I'm making more progress if I do a down 'n dirty animatic that doesn't look great but gives me an idea of what the final will look like. Once that's done, I can pretty it up with tighter and better drawings, tone, etc. I'm not sure if this is the best approach but I'll learn soon.

Today I completed a rough version of the opening titles. My goal is to show you either the animatic or stills of the opening pan from the titles to Honey's apartment bedroom tomorrow.

Now if I could only figure out a way to balance creating with exercising and housecleaning, I'd be a happy girl!