Storyboard for the Slime Mold Life Cycle

 

Storyboard Artist: J.J. Jolanta Jasiulionyte

Storyboard's contribution to the development of the project can't be emphasized enough. From many reasons it is worth taking some time and allowing the luxury not to be rushing. (It was developed roughly in 4-5 days, what is a relevantly long time in 5 weeks long project) Such reasons would be that it is a tool to solve problems of staging, how all the elements will interact with each other, ruff idea of how the camera is going to move and so on. Only after storyboarding is finished, there's confidence to go and start constructing the animation, since it's like you've already rehearsed it.

The storyboard for the Life Cycle of a Slime Mold starts with amoebas gathering into a migrating colony. After what, a more difficult stage of the slime mold forming fruiting body and spores is explained in more detail panel by panel. When spores are formed, fruiting body starts drying out and releases spores to fall down. Spores gently reach the ground and new amoebas come out of the shells. Story is finished with a reveal shot that emphasizes  the scale and the extension of the beautiful process.

To bring clarity in production as well as to clearly communicate the direction in which animation is going to be produced all the panels are done in color with the desired lighting, staging and texturing. The aim is to keep the original look that's seen in the storyboard. 

Go and see finsihed Life Cycle of Slime Mold