OUAN504 - Storyboard

This is the first draft of the story board that after lots of brain storming, Wing and I have come up with. The panels show the establishing shot of the farm at night, using quite a wide shot also with the moon present to allow the audience to immediately recognise the time of day. This is followed by a shot of the pigs in their pig-sty as the farmer leaves after doing the last check of the day. Then the pigs are alone and then spot the moon from outside and start to put their plan into action. We see the three characters come together and the 'escape plan' is introduced which involves digging a tunnel out of the sty and out of the farm. The pig with the helmet and spade then takes action and starts digging. At this point we wanted to have overlapping scenes to depict the time change and the amount of work they're putting into this difficult escape plan, occasionally showing the moon coming up and down and the sun rising and setting. Finally, to end the narrative the pig finally tunnels outside and we see him burst out of the ground triumphantly only to realise that they dug too short and are only a small distance from the sty they were trying to escape from as a punchline or humour driven ending. I made this storyboard digitally as I thought it would be a good opportunity to utilise some of the artwork and designs I had been coming up with in order to use them as part of certain panels. For example, the establishing shot in the storyboard was simply a quick painting I did of the landscape with the farm as we were still coming up with ideas for settings. I thought digital was a good way to go for this as I wanted to be able to express the colour schemes and colour combinations that I had in mind within the actual panels, so working digitally allowed me to tweak them until I had realised the colour scheme I was going for. Several of the film references that we wanted to include are also in the storyboard, the 'Born to Kill' writing on the helmet like in Fullmetal Jacket, the baseball scene from The Great Escape, and the slow removing of dirt that takes place in The Shawshank Redemption is also in there. Finally, I added in some places the direction of movement for both objects and camera so that it was obvious what the intention of the actions were. For example the character running with the spade and the movement of the sun and moon depicting day and night, that will be vital in the actual animation at showing how long the pigs spend digging the tunnel.

Below is the current story board although at this point I think it may be revised at least once more to ensure the story is as viable given the restraints and also to make it the best it can be. A the moment possible limitations could be the clarity of the story which me and Wing have both had concerns about. Secondly, will one minute be enough time to really tell the story and deliver the punchline with timing that will compliment the type of humour we are trying to convey. Hopefully an animatic will clear up any concerns we have regarding timings and clarity of story.