A Christmas Carol
This is my animatic. It is the video the same length of time I planned to have each of my shots on screen for, using my storyboard drawings as the shots before I animate.
This animation was commissioned by Art and Graft. I was commissioned to produce an interpretation of a scene from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
I chose a scene from chapter four of A Christmas Carol. After the phantom and Scrooge see Mrs Dilber and old Joe they visit Scrooge's chamber (he doesn't know it's his body under the covers yet), then once Scrooge realises it is his body, he asks the phantom about if anyone feels any emotion by his death, to show them to him. This is when the Phantom moves his arms and transports them to Caroline and her husbands home, they owe Scrooge money so when they find out he died they are happy as it gives them more time to get the money together to pay back. Scrooge then asks the Phantom to show him "Let me see some tenderness connected with a death", from here the Phantom shows Scrooge the Cratchit's mourning the loss of Tiny Tim.
​
I chose to animate this scene as when I found it in the book, I found that it is a key part of A Christmas Carol as it is ultimately the scene which shows Scrooge the contrast in how people feel about him compared to Tiny Tim (he has lived far less amount of time than Scrooge, but even when he passes it has a major impact on other people compared to when Scrooge passes), this scene ultimately is the final straw for Scrooge to motivate him to change his ways. It is a small scene with a large impact within the narrative.
​
I was originally going to pick the scene with Scrooge and the Phantom in the graveyard or Scrooge and the ghost of Christmas Present when they are speaking, but when I looked through the book I felt that the scene that I did choose had a larger impact.
To meet the deadline for the animation I set myself deadlines for each of the scenes I was animating, this worked well as I did meet the final deadline. When animating I did go through a lot of trial and error, whether it be to make the ghosts arms move, or the movement of Caroline walking was too fast and even having to colour by hand (using the mouse) the different shapes for the background in as it wasn't filling in using the paint bucket fill; I had to use different techniques (not necessarily easy techniques) to achieve the final result of the animation.
​
My animation was in the style of Adventure Time. I took certain features like the Ice King's nose and used it as a feature for Scrooge. And I used the middle picture on the right (in the picture below) to influence my own stone paths.
Production and post production
The production/post production went very well, I didn't run into many problems.
When drawing up the characters and locations onto animate I imported their concept art, that I created, onto animate , then drew over the top of that, then deleted the picture afterwards.
With the character of the Ghost, I originally drew his arms seperate to his body as I wanted his arms to move up, however when I animated his arms moving up, it didn't look how I wanted the movement to look. So, I tried using the warp tool instead so that I could pinpoint where on the Ghost I wanted to move, this was a lot easier and worked well. Overall, the process of making this animation was trialling different ways I could get to the result I wanted, I found ways that didn't work and other ways that did, I am very happy with the final result of this animation.
​