I have a lot of experience taking comic art and apply voice and music over it. This is what I expected to do for Boneeaters. However, it has been many years and now I’m wondering if a better approach is animation. Here are some videos I found when exploring the concept:
It is very heartening to see that Adobe Flash was resurrected from the dead. That was the tool I used in my prior art project and thus I am very drawn to Adobe Animate CC. However, there are some other compelling products to look at such as MOHO, Blender and Unity. I have much to learn yet, but I do think animation is the path I should consider for Boneeaters.
Update: I think I will try Blender and do 3d models. Given the project has 24 hours of content to make, using 3d may really pay off in the end, even if the up-front effort is much higher.
This direction also changes the type of art I will need for the project. Given I will need hours of content to achieve the vision, having art that I can repurpose for different scenes is very powerful. Having backgrounds made for all of the scenes and then all characters done independently allows for a lot of staging opportunities.
And that is a very big deal since I can put time into staging vs paying for art to be done for every single panel. It will feel very different than my last venture in this space. Although I will probably have to get help to stage on the scale I’m looking at for this project.
Update: A big plus to doing some poking around early is that it could change the writing direction. If I go with 3d models, then it makes sense to limit the number of different characters as much as reasonably possible. If I had gone with comic art, then huge masses and massive scenes would be fine, even preferred. With this direction, I will try to focus on a smaller peanut gallery.
And I can still pull in good concepts from my prior project like dialog pop-ups that add flavor to the scene and also allow for people to enjoy with sound off (or if they have a hearing issue). Another goal I’m developing is that Boneeaters could be highly accessible and also be an educational tool regarding leadership. Animating it would really open up the possibilities.