Thoughts for planning a 3D short/animation/project?

Hi all,

Whats your personal approach to planning out an animation/project/short film?

I'm interested in each person's approach, because we've all got our own. Sometimes it starts with concept art, or a storyboard, or a character design.

I ask because, recently, I've been running into the problem of 'losing faith' in a project early in it's development stages. Has anyone experienced this? How have you worked through it?

Hey man.

I understand you completely. It happens to me all the time that my project is not progressing as I excpected, and I am slowly starting to get lazy, and it's seems like project is taking forever. One of the metod to increase your fate is to look at some outstanding works. Go to CG Talk, or here... take a look at some of the great animations, and the new ideas will be born ("OMG, how did he do that? Hmmm... maybe it's even better to do that particle effect this way... wait, I can use similar stuff for my project, but instead of real fire, I will make blue fire that will feet well to my color sheme"). Don't look at Tyson works. You will get discourage.
Other metod is that you swich between parts of work. When you got bored to model or animate, start some lightning tests... if lights turn out good, you will be inspired to make better model to see it how it will look under that light setup. You will start to think with passion on how your shadows from the light are going to act (dance) once you animate the character, for example.

As for the metod:
First thing first - Music.
I am not starting project without music. Sometimes I found music right away, sometimes I find myself searching for hours. Once I find music that feets perfectly with the animation I have in mind, I listen to that particluar song many times. I make some coffe in a big cup, and trying to imagine out every camera move when I am listening... every shot, when I listen song.
After I know which part of the song is for which part of the animation, I am start cuting the song either in sound forge, either in adobe premiere. I remove parts that I don't need, and I am puting togeder other parts to go flowlesly.
After I do that, I listen the song 2 or 3 times again, and again I am start to imagine every shoot, just to make soore all the parts are there.
After that I am starting 3DS Max, and if the animation is, for example, in 10 camera shots, I cut the songs to 10 pieces, and I make new max project for each of the part (and I import that sound parts into max, so it gives me a sence how to animate camera to follow even more music). After all shots is rendered, I import them into combustion or After Effects, then I made post work if needed, I export again into series of images, and after that I open Adobe premiere, load my original sound file... load all shoots... and, guess what... It must feet!
I've never made animatic or storyboard (which is the bad thing), so I suggest you to do that also, after you find suitable music.
Also, if the music have voice over, I am trying to put it right in the begining (when editing music)... as for sound effects, they go later... at the very end.

Hope that helps a little.

That definately helps. Music, especially rhythm, can be a powerful force when editing and planning shots.

But, using music as a starting point isn't really what I'm searching for. I guess a more concrete approach would be an example: Hemlock. It's an awesome video by Tyson, and it has the majority of cinematic elements in it that I'm trying to deconstruct and understand. And I'm not talking about the effects of DOF, motion-blur, vignetting, spec blooms, etc.. I'm talking about the "cinematography" (?) or "artistry"... I don't know.. I'm interested in learning more about the process of taking the initial idea from concept to storyboard to animatic to the rendered passes. There doesn't seem to be much information available online directly addressing that creative flow. My question is this: how does one plan those shots, individually and as a whole, so that they work together?

..or alternatively Tyson, I'll payPal you $20 if you'll throw together a planning/blocking tutorial.. haha!