Revised Storyboard

My final revised storyboard; this took a long time to get right but I think it was worth the effort. I spent a long time drawing out the key poses (probably adding in a lot more than I need to for simple storyboarding) so that I can scan them in and trace over the panels as key frames in Flash to help get me started on the animation. This work process helped me greatly in the previous project and I believe it will help speed up my animation slightly, as well as ensuring I stick to the storyboards.














In the end I decided to replace the tree I had originally envisioned in my rough storyboards (see previous post) with a pylon in order to give a greater sense of peril for Tizz. A tree can be quite dangerous for a child to climb in real life, but for an animated character that's already going out of her way to get electrocuted, it hardly seems like much of a challenge. While I want the story to feel like it's being driven by her child-like sense of wonder and sheer determination, at the same time I don't want it to be too cartoony... It needs to have enough grounding, enough sense of realism for the audience to fear for her safety. I need the viewer to believe that what she's doing is dangerous and that she could seriously hurt herself if something went wrong. A pylon is a far more terrifying obstacle to overcome as there's the chance the lightning could strike the pylon while she's climbing it, thus providing the opportunity to build suspense and drama as she tries to retrieve the kite before the storm passes overhead and she misses her chance.