professional project: week 9-10 (8th-16th december) (5) remaking the concept

Since we were given feedback to keep the concept more fun with Wolverhampton university client and make it less busy with the use of descriptive words that's to do with animation, my fellow colleague Andrew thought up a change in the concept but without wasting some of the main aspects of work we've conducted.
For this he thought up the idea of playing with the letters of 'animation' by making them interact with the character we've created in the original concept but not forcing with uniquely animating each letter as it would take too much time.

new concept storyboard

 The first two scenes are kept the same towards the previous concept and it made it easy to produce what would go into the next shot.

As I got the idea down into another storyboard it clearly shows that this can be simple to animate within the time limit left we have and use of beginning, ending elements from the Wolverhampton university website aswell as the character we've created shows we're not wasting the idea totally. For the character to be motivated and interact better with the letters we thought the idea of having a creature in the shape of ball chase after him but to create more of a purpose with the ball we will make sure it interacts and be apart of the letters instead of the audience thinking what's more to this than chasing the main character.

Animatic and tests
Below shows our start in animating this promotional video through quick tests and making a start on the full animatic. The goal I wanted to achieve when producing these tests is to determine how the character and ball should move and interact with the animated letters.
The main initiative when creating the movements is simple stick men and a circle that comes alive to get a good feel on how they would flow on the screen.

The first plays around with how the characters would land and interact with objects before adding the letters and colour so it gives me a clear idea on how I can animate this easily and easily see if there is any improvements that need to be made before producing rough shapes then detail.
The second plays on how the objects and characters interact with each other to give each one a purpose in this film. I also started to contribute colour into the film to see how well they play out and from the look I would need to improve upon it to give it a better on look but still keep it to the client brief of undergraduate and corporate colours. This test also played around with how the letters would look, be seen clearly in front of the background and keeping it to the rockwell font as suggested by marketing.
The next step is to start out rough shapes of the characters and detail to envision the facial expressions and movements before doing the clean up.

Also as a side note, as I am creating the 2d elements of animation, Andrew will contribute the main aspects of improving the music, editing and creating the shapes for the title, ending scenes and throughout the animated letters sequences. The main shapes use would be circles and diamonds as they would contribute with the colour scheme and keep it fundamentally towards the Wolverhampton client.