Hidden Stories: Development

Development sketches for the Hidden Stories animation:

I sketched a lot while developing the story and the storyboards. This helped me to get an idea of what the scenes may look like in the film and identified what the challenges would be. 

I wanted the end of the story to be about 'letting go', and I went though various different endings:

 At the very beginning I wanted to show my PoW character as an older man living in Edinburgh still, and he gives the toy to his grandchild. But this would not have worked for various reasons - one of which being that that would involve too much confusing time travel in the final film. In the image below you can see some of my discarded storyboards, and another idea I had where the PoW had left the camp and was sitting in Princes Street Gardens (although this again left a lot of unanswered questions and wouldn't have been particularly historically accurate). So the ending I  finally decided on is the PoW being taken from the camp either to be transported to another place or back to Germany, and that is when he sees the child and gives her the horse. I have really enjoyed playing around with the story however, and trying out different paths the story could go down.

The image below is a very early storyboard; as you can see, some aspects have stayed the same and are in my final storyboards, but some aspects have defiantly changed. Using the post-it-notes for storyboarding really allowed me to play around with the story and scenes more.

Character design sketches:

Inspirations and Research:

Again going back to the early stages of development; I briefly researched into things like what WW2 German soldiers looked like (their uniforms), and some of their experiences in British PoW camps. I was also inspired by my parents story of a real life person who was one of our old neighbors, who had been a German PoW in Scotland and decided to stay here.

Above: German soldier with a dog

Below: German PoWs, working in Britain

I also thought of a book I have back home called "War Boy" by the illustrator Michael Foreman.  Searching for examples of "War Boy", I came across another book of his called "War Game" - and it looks like this book has been made into an animation as well.  I have always liked Foreman's work, and if I had the time I would have liked to have maybe made my animation in a similar style and with a hint of watercolors like his illustrations.

Lastly, I probably can't get away without mentioning "War Horse" as well (the original book also illustrated by Foreman!). Although it has not influenced me directly, after working on my story a bit I could see there was a slight resemblance... 

Anyway - it's now time for some intensive animating!

Hidden Stories: Storyboards/Animatic

Here is an animatic of the storyboards for my Hidden Stories animation, made using Adobe Premier. I loved using the post-it-notes for the storyboards, as I could stick them on the wall and look back at them all, get others to look at them, swap scenes around - which was all really helpful. It is maybe not the neatest of animatics (the large border around the storyboard post-it-note bothered me slightly!) but I feel I have got the timing somewhat how I want it to be in the final film. Looking back however, I may make the start scene slightly slower just to ease people into the film so it's obvious where we are and what is going on. The film should be between 2-3mins long.

The story is based around a wooden horse toy; it is about a German Prisoner of War in Edinburgh at the end of WW2 who is making the toy and thinking back to his home in Germany. However his flashback to home is interrupted and destroyed by the war that literally "marches over the hill" in his imagination as he remembers that his home will now be war-torn. In the end scene he is leaving Edinburgh - either to be returned to Germany or moved elsewhere. A child notices his horse toy and at first he hesitates to give it to her, but in the end he realises he has to let go of the past and he gives her the toy.





The toughest challange will be communicating the flashback/thoughts of the PoW - I will need to clearly define what is flashback and what is the 'present' in the animation so the audience do not get confused! Depending on time, I could maybe do the 'present' in colour, and the past in black & white. Also, I am keen for the "war" that appears over the hill to be bright fiery red/orange colours in contrast to a black and white scene.
I definately hope to add some sound affects to the animation (some indicated in the storyboards) and would love to have radio broadcasts about the end of the war as a background sound also, which would help with setting the time period.