How to GET an idea for an animated short project

foreign [Music] tour and today I'm going to be talking about how to come up with an idea for a short animated film this is a question that I get a lot and I see this question a lot in comments on my YouTube videos on my art on my accounts on my DMs emails Etc one thing you have to understand is that an animated short can be anything it could have a story structure it could just be a slice of life or just a single moment in time in a story it could be a montage of sorts or it could just be experimental mumble jumble and honestly the more I think about it I don't think this applies to just animated short films or short films in general but it can also apply to things like Comics or story illustration even other Medias like video games if you saw my video review on hofstad's Colosso course on animation there was an important message that was said there which was hey if you're making something you don't have to be deep you don't have to be thought provoking all you need to do with your art or what your art needs to do is just to merely exist nothing more nothing less many people including myself we want to make the best that we can maybe that's something that's deep provocative or something that's like super well written and well executed and I think that prevents a lot of people from actually making and finishing short films which is in theory very easy to do like if we were just to strip away the criteria the standards of deep or good writing or good animation I'm pretty sure we make a lot of stuff without any fear if our sole purpose is just to make things just exist like I said there's a lot of different types of stories that you can tell with your short film and the first one I want to talk about is your story structure centered film or a narrative focused film the way I would describe these short films is that they have a clear beginning and ending and then you also establish your setup the setting the plot who the characters are what the character wants what their goals are and if there's an obstacle between them and a goal or it could just be any other form of story structure hero's journey rag to riches Etc very conventional storytelling type of stuff many major Animation Studios that produce short films follow the structure it's a good one to do if you want to focus on your writing skills put that into practicality and make it accessible for many types of people I know when I did my student shorts I really wanted to work for these major Studios so I followed the structure the only caveat to this is that you spend a lot more time thinking about the story itself the characters if they obtain their goal if they don't how do they obtain the goal and what message you're trying to say and from my experience you do many passes of this until you figure out what your story is about or what your film is all about another one that I personally love and I encourage many of you guys to do is to do a vignette A Slice of Life or just a moment or a scenario look if you don't want to think too hard about story structure or trying to come up with the most provocative writing ever and you just want to make a short film I would suggest doing something like this stuff like this doesn't have a very clear beginning or end it just goes it could just be two characters interacting with each other it could be an elaborate fight scene it could just be a moment of dialogue it could be a hint to something more these films could just be Vibes nothing more and nothing less it could have a clear setup it could have clear characters but again it doesn't have to have a film that has a really strong story structure or whatever that is that has a solid beginning and a solid ending then you have your Montage film so what I'm saying is that each of these Cuts or sequences in the film don't really necessarily connect with each other but generally they're in the same subject matter or theme so examples of this for me would be things like anime opening sequences or proof of Concepts that I've personally made for Sizzle reels and trailers for story ideas that I have they're just a collection of shots and ideas of what this product could be at the end it could just be a collection or compilation of things that you've done in the past and then somehow you've made it into some form of film the previous two I mentioned will actually help you develop your writing skills and your character development skills but something like this could just be imagination and eye candy and will allow you to experiment with the medium speaking of you could have something that's very experimental meaning it's non-conventional maybe it's outside the box or non-ordinary very unorthodox this could apply to storytelling whether or not characters are involved what kind of visuals you're playing with are you mixing media the thing with experimental stuff is I don't really have a say in what an experimental film looks like so I've talked about films story films without story films that are just Montage in a collection of shots but for this one I guess it's none of those that I mentioned earlier or something that's just unorthodox or you could mix different things up so you could have a film that's a montage but somehow have a bit of Storytelling there again that's really all up to you to decide I just talked about the types of short films that you can make whether it's a story driven film a character-driven film it's just a vignette it's just a slice of moment or maybe it's a montage of experimental stuff okay so whatever you choose to do maybe it's time to get an idea of what you want to do and figure out what your short film is about so for me for example I think the very first thing that I do is maybe I draw a character that I enjoy drawing or that I like seeing or maybe I draw a visual imagery that is really cool to me it could be a little Doodle it could be a little sketch or it could be a very lavish illustration whatever it is you want to make something based off that piece and a lot of artists and animators do it that way which is forming a story based on a drawing or an illustrated piece that you did and you want to see if there is something there that is worth turning into a short film so that's one way then what I was just doing is writing several different log lines and the log line is a sentence that summarizes the setup of your idea if you're developing something that has story and a structure then you're probably going to want to establish the setting your characters and what they're trying to overcome or what they're trying to achieve or it could just be a log line or a sentence that summarizes the the scenario or the vibe of your project and if you have an inkling of an idea or you're making log lines based on an image that you created and you don't really have a figured out story or an idea I would suggest writing as many log lines as you can based on that image that you made again just write as many as you can and whatever is in your head the many possibilities that this project can be and then take a long break from it step away from it refresh your mind do something else and then come back to it come back to all those log lines you wrote and start Crossing out the ones that don't resonate to you anymore and the ones that do resonate well you can start coming up with more specific log lines or you can just keep exploring from there I keep a document of random log line that I wrote many months ago some I don't even remember writing them at all but maybe I'll revisit some other time but I think it's a good idea to get into the habit of putting down your ideas down on paper and then sometime in the future you can look back at it come back to it and see if there is something there or if there is something that resonates with you within those log lines okay once you're happy with your ultimate log Line This is luggling that you want and now you want to make a short film based off this log line then I would recommend writing an outline of it so what this means is write down the plot in the film as you visualize so I would say write an outline of your short film in a paragraph and for each sentence or you know sentence by sentence write down what happens in your actual film from beat to B so again write it down as you're visualizing your short what happens in the beginning what happens in the middle and what happens in the end and now you already have a written down version of your short film in some way or form the next thing you can do is maybe write a screenplay version of that outline so you know actually putting it down in a screenplay format in a script writing format because it could be a good reference to running time for your film so there's a general rule that one page per script is one minute of footage so if you wanted to write your film in a script format so you can actually see how long your film can be that could be wise to do now for the films that I did back at school I didn't do this I personally wish that I did but I think I was more in the mindset of oh I'm only gonna do a script if my film has dialogue or if it has people talking but a script can be useful for none dialogue films as well so if you want to do that go for it you can also do beat boards for your films and I talked about this in a previous YouTube video where I talk about instead of storyboarding your whole thing maybe write these single piece illustrations that summarize a key story moment or key moment in your film that stuff can help you visualize what the film can look like now some people don't even write their films they just jump straight into storyboarding but nowadays I personally like having a writing so I know how the film starts how the film ends and at least I have a reference to board two rather than when I board I tend to keep going I tend to add more shots or more story moments that don't need to happen so I get lost easily when I just jump straight into boarding when I write things out at least my thoughts and intentions are organized that way so if you saw my video on working on Sonic the Hedgehog 2 I tend to do thumbnails of my storyboards before I even move on to storyboarding so these little crude drawings to get an idea of the shots that I want before committing to them in my full boards sometimes I draw alongside my script or sometimes I do this on a separate piece of paper but you could even use those thumbnails instead edit it together in an animatic or like a real and now you have a short film that's already fully typed at this point it's really just finessing the shots tidying things down and making the final image so if you want to construct a clear road map of your film I would say make an animatic or storyboard reel of it before we even start making fully finished shots or even start animating them so again when it comes to short films especially for animation it can be anything it can be experimental or it could have a really clear solid story structure so this got me thinking you know coming up with a short film idea can be easy if you don't have a lot of high standards or a really tough criteria for it I think the people who ask me this question have this notion or this idea of what is a great short film it could be thought provoking it could have solid writing it could be really really good and they want to hit that criteria more so than just making a short film but then a part of me also thought about people asking me this question it could be a genuine question of how do you get an idea or how do you develop an idea for a short film so I wanted to make a video of what I would do and how I would go about it and I hope this helps you there's nothing great than making a short film alright see ya interested in learning hand-drawn animation or learning how to finish an animated shot from beginning to end have a look at the store where you'll find the complete introduction to 2D animation video course tutorials and other resources learn classical animation approaches drawing lectures techniques and other process videos visit the store through the link in the description below

Channel: Toniko Pantoja

Views: 35,081

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Id: eowoLKwynao

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 18 2023