For this week's work in progress documentation, I made a few big changes to my project. First off, I decided to cut large chunks out of my original storyboard due to time and resource constraints. I realized I was adding in too many scenes, and just kept the ones that were most important. As a result, my storyboard looks something like this:
1. Main character walks on street
2. Main character enters lobby of apartment, and enters his living space
3. Attempts to study in peace but is interrupted by next door neighbor
4. After altercation with neighbor, is distracted by loud music from floor below
5. Combination of sounds from next door and floor below pushes main character to the edge
6. Has a breakdown in his room, and is told off by another neighbor for causing too much noise
7. End
I also did some redesigns for my characters to make rigging a lot easier:
This formatting looks a bit strange, but I made sure all the limbs were separate in order for seamless joint rotation to be possible. I also took out the fourth character I originally had, since I erased that section of the story. I also created the rest of my environment assets (all assets, including characters, are personally drawn in Illustrator).
Finally, here is a small snippet of the animation draft I currently have. The resolution is set to low, since this is only for prototyping purposes:
In regards to "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud, I thought that the book was very insightful and eye opening. I also loved how the book itself was formatted like a comic, but relayed information as if you were reading a textbook. Specifically, the 'Triangle of Representation' stood out to me in that it pushed me to view the relationship between physical reality and cartoons in a new light. I loved how the book described the phenomenon where a more cartoonish face is interpreted as embodying the viewer, while a more realistic face is seen as embodying the character of 'another'. In a way, the abstract nature of cartoons allows for the audience to imprint themselves into the world that the animator has created.