The English component of the Narrative unit sits at the heart of it all. It was in English class where we literary warriors fought hard to bring our self-imagined characters and worlds into written words. It was an arduous process, with more than its fair share of injury and fatality. Week after week, we pounded away on our tales, as if they were red-hot pieces of iron to be worked into fine swords.
Finally, we emerged victorious. Pens in one hand, scripts clutched in the other, the remaining warriors marched their way towards pastures then unexplored. Little did they know that their struggle would only escalate.
My initial story I wrote in English, "The Pass Less Traveled," was a tale about a young woman, Samantha Wells, who works at a finance firm who hates her job and who only gets joy out of driving her brother's old sports car to and from work. It explores one unusual encounter after an otherwise normal day at work., when her usually solo drive becomes a little more competitive.
Writing it in three different perspectives was a good preparatory exercise for thinking about camera angles and perspectives I'd want to use during my After Effects animation. It also made me think about what the characters (including the cars) would be doing, which helped with my screenplay. I didn't have too much dialogue in my original story, and I reduced it even more once I started converting it to how I wanted it for my animation.
Since cars are very, very hard to draw, and I would presume even that much harder to animate, I decided to save myself headaches and change the narrative from a slice-of-life car race into a colorful sci-fi spaceship race. Much better suited for animation, since I don't have to worry about animating things like the road, wheels, trees, and the view of the drivers inside.
After making that crucial decision, I created my animatic and converted the story. The animatic has been my reference throughout the entire animating process, and has been immensely helpful with speeding up the process of lining up different shots and camera angles.