I’ve written a short story for my illustration class that I then had to roughly storyboard out.  So, I designed this story, Chikan Abu Mukashibanashi (roughly translated from Japanese to The Perverted Horsefly Folktale), to be an animated short.  Here’s the rough idea:

The tale starts with a young man spying on his wife in the bath.  She kicks him out for being a pervert and he goes wandering in the forest to clear his head.  Along the way he gets tired and falls asleep against a tree.  When his head falls back and his mouth opens his soul escapes his body in the form of a horsefly and suddenly takes off buzzing very quickly further down the valley where the sun is only just beginning to set.

Here the horsefly happens upon an old man wandering in the woods as well.  The old man is lost and fussing over what he should eat, picking up a mushroom, contemplating it and then tossing it to the ground.  At this moment the old man hears some beautiful singing and begins to follow it, horsefly in tow.

The old man walks through the bush and finds an enormous mansion with a beautiful woman standing in the doorway wearing barely anything.  She beckons to him and he instantly comes closer.  She invites him inside and tells him that it is her house, that he can stay as long as he likes, that she will feed him whatever he likes, entertain him, and take care of him, but the only rule is that she does not like to be disturbed while singing in her back courtyard.  The man agrees and comes in where she treats him to the best feast he has ever had, all the while the horsefly is watching from over his shoulder.

After dinner the woman says that she is going out to sing and that the man may do whatever he likes inside the house as long as he does not disturb her.  His curiosity gets the best of him however and he begins to sneak and follow her toward the back exit.  When he comes around a corner he finds her clothes and his excitement gets the best of him.  He opens the back door and gazes upon the woman singing in the nude.  When she notices him though she shrieks at him and instantly turns into a nightingale and flies away.  Completely dumbfounded the man turns to make his way back into the mansion only to discover it has disappeared into thin air and he begins to curse at himself for being such a fool.

At this point the horsefly zips back towards its original location as though being pulled by some unknown force.  It enters the sleeping man’s mouth and he wakes up with a start.  He massages his temples and wonders if it was all a dream.  He makes his way back home and apologizes to his wife and promises never to forget his manners and morales or let his urges get the best of him.

Obviously a strange story, no?  I took in a lot of various bits from Japanese folktale culture and sort of set it on blend for a few minutes.  At any rate, it was just the right amount of strange that I needed before Christmas.  Now, lets see some of the storyboards:

Here is the man leaning against a tree and falling asleep, with the horsefly then coming out of his mouth and spelling the title of the animation in the sky with its flight path.  Notice how when he yawns, the word yawn actually comes animated out of his mouth.  Any time you see something like that there would actually be animated hand drawn text in the animation as well:

And here the horselfy happens upon the old man wandering and watches him pick up a mushroom:

And now we have the scene right when the man looks out into the courtyard. All we see at first is a woman’s eye that blinks and when it opens its a birds eye, and then the nightingale shrieking at him before flying away and leaving feathers behind.

So, there you have it! I hope you like it. Mostly it was just a class exercise to help get a grasp on storyboarding with limited color palettes.