The idea here is to establish the father/son relationship for the story. The father is adjusting the camera to take a picture of him and Max in front of Banana King. The father gets impatient when the photo doesn’t take and starts to get angry. And of course the camera takes a photo at that instant.

The last one…I think. I didn’t render the roof because it is fur and would have taken too long! This is just visually rough so I can get the timing down.

Jungle foliage will be created by rendering images w/alpha and sticking them on planes around the shop.

Re-recording voice overs this Friday!

And what else?  Oh right, ANIMATION!!  CRUNCH TIME!

In this animatic I have added more suitable monkey dialog, as well as Max’s tag on the bananas. The midterm crits enjoyed the animatic, however it was noted that the story and the father-son relationship need more clarification.

Yes folks, it’s still a work in progress…

Over the winter break I was able to meet with my thesis advisor, James Fisher. We discussed the importance of a pre-viz animatic. At the moment I have a rough 3D animatic, with each shot set up. This gives me a good feel for what objects need to be in the scene, their placements, and camera positions/angles.

Each of these shots is organized so that Maya references the geometry and rigs from original work files. This way, a chance to character geometry can be made in the original work file and it will change down the pipeline to the scene file, instead of copying and pasting.

Warning, the animatic is VERY rough!

The story begins with Max’s father tending to their family banana shop while Max is busy working on a colorful, fantastic, cityscape mural. He paints with spray paint on his stone canvas, but is rudely interrupted by his father to return to his responsibilities in the shop. Max paints his signature monkey king on his mural and angrily stomps inside the shop. His father orders him to price and stock the new shipment of bananas. Max wishes he was outside working on his mural. As he looks outside at his masterpiece, his father immediately pulls down the window shade to block this distraction.

The next day, Max is reading his favorite graffiti magazine “Graffunky” at the front counter of Banana King. Several boxes of unpriced and unstocked bananas sit on the counter. His fuming father approaches Max with his teeth and fists clenched. He begins to unleash his frustration on Max and yells at him to price and stock the bananas. He picks up a banana and throws it during his temper tantrum. The banana ironically boomerangs back towards him, hits him on the head, and knocks him to the floor. Max laughs at his father’s clumsy fall, which only makes his father angrier. As he pulls himself up from the floor, he rips “Graffunky” into pieces and orders Max to get back to work. He runs outside to destroy and paint over his mural with white paint. Max grows livid and decides to rebel against his father and “tag” each of the bananas in the store. He prices and tags, and prices and tags. After tagging all of the produce in the store, customers arrive and he sells them the bananas with his signature on them.

A week later, the mail arrives with a newspaper (“Primate Post”) and magazine (“Graffunky”). The newspaper raves about Banana King’s unique bananas and branding and the magazine claims Max’s “vandalism” is the new fad in the graffiti world: Produce Tag! His father notices the monkey king tags on his bananas and grows angry because he thinks their products are ruined. Max shows him the paper and he realizes the shop is famous and they will be rich. He stops criticizing Max and celebrates because they will be rich. He walks away as Max continues reading about his new and famous role in the world of “Graffunky”.