For my senior illustration capstone in 2022, I chose to do a short animation based on Edgar Allen Poe's 1845 poem, "The Raven." The intention for this animation was to showcase my rotoscoping abilities, as well as my skills in storytelling, audio editing, and creating narrative tension.
The concepting phase began in December of 2021, when I made my rough animatic storyboard to pitch to my colleagues. My inclination was to present the story as a series of cuts, increasing in tension, in a similar formula to the trailer for a horror film.
Rough Animatic Storyboard
From my pitch in January of 2022 to the date of exhibition in April 2022, I had only three and a half months to complete this project. The first step was to create video references for myself. For that, I give a lot of credit to the friends and colleagues who worked with me to create my reference video library.
Linework
With that done I began with background linework, followed by the linework of my keyframes. Then came the flat value stage. At this point, I had to make the decision to limit myself to black and white values, rather than including color. While I would have loved to include color, as show in the test color frame below, there simply wasn't enough time to achieve full color, while attending to other projects and classes.
Evolution of a shot: Reference, linework, flats
Finally, I was able to tackle the render and audio editing. The audio had been tackled in stages through this process, so the final editing was a quick process. I was also able to create a large poster for the project, again drawing from horror film poster iconography.
Project Poster
The final product is something that I am very proud of. Enjoy!
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