The drawn animatic was looking good and helped me plan out my shots. But it was much more useful for me to physically build my shots on the animation rig to see if I could construct the space I wanted. So I decided to make my animatic with still images taken on the set rather than drawn on paper. Here it is:
This turned out pretty well and I learnt a lot from it.
1. I need to make my robots stronger.
I had problems getting my robots to do what I want them to do. The arms weren't strong enough to hold the pizza. So I need to re-enforce them and fix them to the body of the robot more effectively.
2. I need to make Postbot able to stand up.
Postbot, and the other two actually need rebalancing. Postbot was the only one I had trouble with getting to stand, but equally I haven't animated Ping's walk cycle yet so that could also cause a problem.
3. How will Ping jump?
Ping does not have knees, I think you need knees to jump. This is why in the shots where he should jump (his close up) he currently just sits there.
4. What am I going to do with the background?
It looks very flat and very bland. In a way I like this but I'd like to test some more realistic looking buildings .
5. Lots of time needs to be put into sound design.
For this I used found royalty free sounds from the internet and I think it really shows. I aim to record my own sounds. Hopefully this will give it a kind of audio-continuity and overall better quality and more appropriate sounds.
So, a useful exercise. My next move is to focus on the above areas as well as more testing.
