Rough storyboard

I've been a little preoccupied with Digital Skills this week. Finding it a bit tricky to divide my attention equally between projects, but I've managed to get some more prep work done. I feel more comfortable doing extensive prep work before jumping straight into animating — in my experience it tends to yield better results for me, even if I'm just doing goofy pencil tests.

I'm starting to finalise some of the key poses for my storyboard at this point, just to make drawing the keyframes easier for me. It will save me a massive headache later if I'm not having to continuously re-tweak them 'til they look right...

Stair climbing scribbles were referenced from a Muybridge image I nabbed off Google! I'm relatively happy with the puddle poses at this point. I think I could stand to make his reaction a little more exaggerated and flamboyant, with lots of ridiculous hand flapping. I think that "sad walk" with the trailing arms on the left is a bit too much — he looks more tired than anything.

I've drafted out a quick storyboard to give me a solid reference for the sequence of events:

I'm not too pleased with the posing and body language in some of these frames (notably the stair climbing and puddle bits) but I've now got a fairly solid idea of the sequence now, so I can start producing some preliminary tests. I'm hoping to get a few test shots done this weekend so that I can start timing it all with an actor out on Tuesday, ready to start putting it together!