Repost: The Best TIme Of Day To Not To Take a Selfie

  A re-post of my info-graphic animation The Best Time of Day to Not Take A Selfie. Created earlier this year before I set ot work on Colo Colo.

Adaptation A: "Art Of" Document

Art of: The Best Time of Day to Not Take a Selfie

Adaptation A: Final Animation

The Best Time of Day to Not Take a Selfie from Mark Stamp on Vimeo.

Adaptation A: Character designs

  Provided are the planned characters for each of the scenes I have planned: Two general characters (1, 2), a surgeon (3), a policeman (4), a clerk (5), a teleportation technician (6), a bartender (7) and a squirrel (8). Each figure consists of multiple layers that can be used to as control systems for the various limbs and body parts. Nothing too complex, the policeman is probably the most complex with 7 controllable layers due to the peak of his cap.

Adaptation A: Storyboard

  The bulk of today was spent assembling the storyboard. I've worked out that in the rate I usually design, 30 frames is about maybe a minute but it can vary depending on what is going on..This feels like one of my shorter storyboards however, and I worked to keep the action snappy.

  The inclusion of the squirrel at the end came from a previous iteration, it was commented that the squirrel appeared at the end, referring to when the squirrel pops up in a post-transition snapshot. I figured I could include it at the end so that the ending card is not total blackness and simple text.

Adaption A: Reworking Storyboard and Script

  The script idea came from the feeling I needed to know what my story wasdoing in terms of length before committing to a storyboard. Partway though I had an idea however: I did not feel the current idea of action, shutter and then picture was a very good flow. So I went back and decided to characterise the main character seen as "Selfie Stan", or simply Stan, and the scenarios we woulds ee would be his misadventures.Above is the storyboard I managed ot get done before I realised the story I had probably wasn't working as well as I thought it would. So I went back to rewrite the script.

V3 Best Time of Day to Take a Selfie

  After publishing this on Scribd I had a thought that maybe the shutter-close transition still breaks the flow. Given the abstract nature of an infographic, perhaps what happens instead is Stan "falls" from scene to scene. For instance transition one to two has him pushed into the GP's office, when the doctor jabs him in his rear end he and leaps up into the forest scene. When the squirrel jumps on his face and he flais about, he runs into the bar scene but escapes the squirrel. When he is then pulled into the cloud of fighting and falls into the teleporter room.

Those will be tasks for Wednesday - to add those into the script and rework the storyboard.

Adaptation A: Investigating Character Silhouettes

  Because my infographic is very mobile-centric I considered looking into a simple, but bold look to the characters. The contact sheet above is a look for an 'average' appearance within the animation, because of the variety of scenarios I might be able to play with the shapes, such as giving more muscular characters a more triangular torso. About halfway though the creation os this sheet I wondered about looking into the mascot for Android as an inspiration. It's a basic, humanoid build, relates very closely to phones but has a flexibility to it.

  I took one of the Android-related designs and looked into how I could play about with body shapes to convey characteristics about any included characters. I think the use of an Android-themed character works well with the intended message of the infographic. So my next task would be, along with working otu a storyboard, how to distinguish characters.

Adaptation A: Influence Map and Scenarios

  I considered going for fairly straightforward art-style. Mr Selfie. and Dumb Ways to Die struck me as a bold ,simple but evocative style. Regarding the development of the story itself I want ot thank everyone who provided feedback to the survey to see which worked, and it seems the most popular scenario by far was a guy trying to take a selfie during a bar fight.

The considered scenarios are therefore:

1. Running a marathon
2. During a prison rescue
3. Experincing a transporter malfunction
4. during a medical exam
5. In a queue
6. In front of a wild animal
7. During a bank robbery
8. During an arrest
9. When in a bar fight

That should be enough to cover a minute to a minute and a half, and depending on how the storyboard comes along a couple of these may be dropped. Alternatively there is using the principle of escalation:

1. In a queue
2. During a medical exam
3. Running a marathon
4. During an arrest
5. In front of a wild animal
6. During a bank robbery
7. When in a bar fight
8. During a prison rescue
9. Experiencing a transporter malfunction

Perhaps the principle of escalation would make more sense.