Now that Lincoln Calling 2018 has come to a close, we wanted to share with you our storyboarding process. If you haven't yet, be sure to check out the vimeo link for this piece. This was a really fun project to work on - the 12 year old inside of me started screaming when I found out that I got to design spaceships for a week straight.
The first step in our animation process is to create a storyboard. This acts almost like a map for the entire production phase and is critical to creating a successful animation. I'm a very private sketcher, so publicly posting things like this is a little raw for me. My storyboards are fast and loose and lack a lot of precision. The idea is to get a visualization of the scene rather than flesh out every minute detail. The details come later.
After the storyboards are created, they get sent to the client for approval and then are scanned into Illustrator. Once inside illustrator, they serve as a locked reference layer and used as the foundation for the illustrations. I'm a pretty visual guy, so I won't do much narrating on the individual scenes and you can analyze them for yourself. If you have any questions about our creative process or what my terrible handwriting says, feel free to leave a comment down below.
Without further ado:
Scene Storyboards & Animation Stills
I went ahead and put the storyboards on the left and then added a still from the animation file so you can see the end result. If there's interest, I might upload some screenshots of the Illustrator files.
Reference Drawings
These are extra drawings that we used to provide further context. In some cases, they were drawn before the actual storyboard and was a way to problem solve towards the layout of the scenes.
Conclusion
So yeah, this is what we do for every animation and motion design piece. Sometimes we use a smaller four-shot template if the scenes are less complex, but this is the general idea. The sketches aren't the prettiest or the tidiest, but I think it's kind of neat seeing them all accumulated together. Also, be sure to hit up Lincoln Calling on Instagram and support them by checking out their website.