Storyboard

The storyboard was important for this. I had one key principle I wanted to uphold throughout: Negative space. It reflects the feeling of being lost the boy is experiencing, makes the audience feel a sense of pressure through reverse psychology and keeps the audience's entire focus where I want it to be.

I tend to think in images, rather than words when approaching a script, whether I write it or simply read and interpret it. Therefore storyboarding often comes very easily to, if more the actual conceptual part rather than the drawing. It is also worth mentioning that I was still working on Character Design when working on this, so the character will not always be 100% representative: This is the storyboard:

Important to note are the following:

Probably the most important sequence is scene 2, in which we see the whole of the boy's room. It introduces us the a character without seeing him yet and, at the end, also introduces the reading light, which symbolises the essential connection between the boy and his books/love for reading. 

The reading light is, after it is introduced in scene 2, always present. In frames in which it is not physically visible, the audience will be able to see its light in the finished version.

Be aware that I tend to be very fickle with these preliminary choices. Come the animatic, a lot of these shots will have changed angle or pose. This process of storyboarding and making an animatic is almost more of note taking and rethinking rather than making decisions. It is part of my decision making process. While I may well change small details now, I might go over my finished animatic and make notes on what to change a week or so after.

This step also made apparent my difficulty to let go of live action film making. My only experience in making short films previous to this was in live action. Therefore, my thinking seems to take its time to adjust the animated medium, especially in an animated piece. Please see more on my research concerning the live action short film versus the animated short film in the 'Animation v Live-Action' tab.