Storyboarding Nursery Rhymes (1): Mary had a little lamb paper editing

Today's task was to choose a nursery rhymes and try to paper edit it into a 12-18 frames storyboard. The nursery rhyme I chose was Mart had a little lamb. Since I did not know any other nursery rhymes, I rather picked the one I feel comfortable working with.

Mary had a little lamb,

His fleece was white as snow,

And everywhere that Mary went,

The lamb was sure to go.

He followed her to school one day,

Which was against the rule,

It made the children laugh and play

To see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out,

But still it lingered near,

And waited patiently about,

Till Mary did appear.

"Why does the lamb love Mary so?"

The eager children cry.

"Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know."

The teacher did reply.

I found planning before hand was definitely useful in terms of achieving an informative content. Dividing the story into sequence allows the story to be told clearly and professionally to the audience.

The very first planning and mind-map

 At first, my idea for this particular rhyme was so limited as it is rather difficult to twist a traditional story into something new and creative. The idea of making the whole story into a cyber, future world-style is exciting but since we did not have much time in designing the sceneries and clothing, I gave up this far-fetched idea quickly. Additionally, I asked Hayley for help with some of the meanings within the rhyme. Fully understanding the meanings behind the story is essentially important in planning an efficient storyboard!

I do not like the inital design of Mary and the lamb which look really boring and do not think they could give a spark to the story... so I started to come up with a crazy idea = changing the rhyme completely into "'Lamby' had a little girl"

I was deciding to call the girl May refer to Mary but it does not sound right and looks a bit odd in my view therefore I prefer just calling her the little girl.

I did not know how the story will end up like but experimenting is always fun!

Some frames I did not use at the end as they are not conceptually planned and they do not have a lot of potential to develop further.

Animatic of "'Lamby' had a little girl"

 One thing I found it really hard is to consider the amount of frames that use in a sentence. As the amount of frames are limited so carefully planning for the storyboard is vital. I think I need to improve my drawing skills and need to work quickly by practicing daily; The characters can be devloped further more to show extra characteristics; I hope to reconsider the shot angles and to figure out how different point of view will affect the composition of the story.

We sticked our sticky notes onto the wall so that we could get feedbacks from the others.

I really enjoy giving and recieving feedbacks from others which helps me identify the pros and cons. Most of the feedbacks are positive and encouraging for example,  one of they suggest that I could have designed a better plot as the story confuses the audience which is something I had never noticed before and I hope to see improvement in the future.