Animated Storytelling

Description

Animated Storytelling is an approachable and easy-to-follow guide that teaches students how to create memorable stories using animation and motion graphics. The book’s friendly tone and boiled-down ideas take them through the stages of concept development, pre-production, storyboarding, and design (including color, world building, and sound) with clear examples and easy-to-follow assignments. With an emphasis on pre-visualization, technique selection, and experimentation, this book provides illustration students, graphic design students, and animation students, with useful tools to help get their designs moving with meaning at any budget.

Animation is a limitless medium for telling stories. Artists can create worlds, defy gravity, flip from factual to fantasy, and transport audiences to places they never imagined. The challenge is having the discipline to reel it in and be intentional about your storytelling choices. This book shows you how.

In Animated Storytelling, you’ll learn how to create memorable stories using animation and motion graphics by following 10 simple guidelines that take you through the stages of concept development, pre-production, storyboarding, and design. Award-winning animator Liz Blazer uses clear examples and easy-to-follow exercises to provide you with the instruction, encouragement, and tools you need to get your designs moving.

Whether your goal is to create exciting shorts for film festivals, effective messaging for broadcast or online, or simply to gain a deeper understanding of the medium, Animated Storytelling simplifies the process of creating clear and engaging stories for animation and motion graphics so you can get started easily.

In Animated Storytelling, you’ll learn how to:

• Write a creative brief for your project
• Find and communicate your story’s big idea
• Create a tight story using linear and nonlinear story structures
• Use color to clarify and enrich your story
• Define the rules for your animated world, and commit to them
• Ease into the challenging task of animation
• Make the work you want to be hired to do
• Share your work with the world!

A simple set of 10 guidelines to help designers make the transition from static to animation and motion graphics

• A simplified, accessible, and motivating method for working in motion that won’t intimidate first-timers
• Includes prompts and assignments honed and tested on students and industry professionals that make learning to create visual stories a hands-on experience
• Loaded with visual examples including stills and storyboards that illustrate principles in a way that is easy and fun for visual learners to understand

• Set of 10 guidelines help students make the transition from static to animation and motion graphics

• A simplified, accessible, and motivating method for working in motion that won’t intimidate beginning students

• Includes prompts and assignments honed and tested on students and industry professionals that make learning to create visual stories a hands-on experience

• Loaded with visual examples including stills and storyboards that illustrate principles in a way that is easy and fun for students to understand

1. Pre-Production
The doorway to a well-planned animated piece

2. Storytelling
Tame the limitless medium

3. Storyboarding
Build your visual script

4. Color Sense
Enhance your story with the right palette

5. Weird Science
Experiment with animation

6. Sound Ideas
Get your audio and story in sync

7. Design Wonderland
World building and environmental design

8. Technique
Marry style and story

9. Animate!
Big-picture thinking, frame by frame

10. Show and Tell
Create, share, and network
Liz Blazer is a filmmaker, art director, visual artist, designer, animator, and educator. She has worked as a development artist for Disney, as a special effects designer for MTV, and as an art director for the Palestinian/Israeli Sesame Street. Her animated documentary Backseat Bingo traveled to 180 film festivals in 15 countries and won many awards, including awards from the HBO Comedy Arts Festival, Animation Magazine and the International Documentary Association. As an educator, Blazer emphasizes storytelling and pitching as she guides her students to bring their art to life through animation.

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