Explorations

During this unit, we had to focus on a 21st century skill we wanted to improve. I wanted to learn about screenwriting for animation, specifically writing a pilot episode for animation. This relates to skills like creativity and high productivity, and would, later on, relate to teaming and collaboration in the process of doing the other parts of the pilot.

My process for this project consisted of these steps;

  1. I wrote a logline for just to get a stronger idea of what I was trying to accomplish with the story in the first place.
  2. I came up with some characters, tried to make sure they weren’t identical or had zero chemistry, because it’s not fun to watch. I tried not to prioritize the plot or location over the characters because that usually doesn’t lead to an interesting series most of the time.
  3. I choose a story structure that I wanted to work with, my options ranged from 3 point to 12 point. I went with the three point structure, because I felt that it would fit the story I was trying to tell the most.
  4. I outlined my story using the story structure I chose, adding subpoints as I went along. My 2nd point/act had the most notes, reflecting a longer part in the script, which is pretty standard within storytelling.
  5. Then I wrote it, and made the first draft. It was very rough, as first drafts tend to be.

My final product will be a full script for a pilot episode, I’m still editing it, and I’m planning on getting community feedback because I actually want it to be good. For my zenith, I want to turn this into a fully made animatic with voice acting and all.

This is the infographic I made, as you can see, it lays out the steps of the hero’s journey.

Here is a screenshot of the document in illustrator. I had to work with many layers to get my graphics to work and I struggled with some of the effects, such as coloring and the lemon juice at the bottom.

 

In short, I learned a lot by doing this project. As I’ve stated before, I want to make a full pilot animatic for my zenith project. I’m glad I was able to get it started now, as making one is a big project to tackle. I’m also glad I was able to learn more about story structure in general because I don’t know if I would have ever learned some of these things if not for this project.