Writing these reflection posts got away from me during the last week before the winter holidays so I will summarize what else we got done, before coming back in January.
Aki and Saf finished the frames for the animatic and we put them into Premier Pro again to view them in sequence (as we opted not to use Storyboard Pro).
Amelia created a design for the little girl in the flashback. We used the same palette as the doll but with a different hair color and contrasting values, so the shots with them together can be more visually compelling and the doll isn’t lost in the color of the overalls. We thought up some backstory, in that the doll was inherited by the girl from her grandmother, so while she may not look like the doll, she still cared for her and dressed her up in her favorite colors.
We also decided who would be animating roughs for which parts as shown below. Everyone got about 5 seconds, but Ian and I assigned ourselves the same bit, as I had to continue working on the backgrounds and was going to animate the title sequence and edit the film. This turned into him taking over that 5 second section. I do plan to work with everyone on tiedowns to make sure the style is consistent as I feel that is our biggest weakness so far.
Finally, over the break I finished up the backgrounds for each shot. The final one didn’t require as much detail as we are going to blur it during the flashback scene.