About the Animatics

A new type of fanwork has emerged over the past decade.  My haphazard research is far from comprehensive, but around 2017 we started seeing a lot of fan-made animatics being shared online through video platforms like Youtube, usually for popular musicals like "Hamilton" and "Six," but also for comedy sketches, podcasts, audiobooks, and other audio-centric media.  Animatics are essentially storyboards synced up to match the audio, so they play like extremely rough fan-made animated shorts.  In filmmaking they're used to test out timing and editing choices, before committing to a final version of a sequence.  However, in certain fan communities they've become beloved pieces of media in and of themselves.  

I've regularly stumbled across animatics online before, usually BTS material or examples created for artist portfolios.  And then last year I found some reaction videos for animatics for "Epic: The Musical," Jorge Rivera-Herrans' lengthy, independently produced, sung-through adaptation of Homer's "The Odyssey."  The full project was released over several years, and consists of forty songs, running two and a half hours altogether, and became popular through TikTok starting in 2021.  Starting in early 2023 fan artists started posting animatics for it, and those racked up millions and millions of views on Youtube and other platforms over the next few years.  The creators for the most popular ones have garnered their own fans as a result.  There are now animatics for the entirety of "Epic" musical and additional songs that didn't make the cut.  If you watch them together it plays more or less like a single movie.  And it's one of the better fan-film projects I've ever seen.  A few months ago, it was announced that an animated film version of "Epic: the Musical" was in the works, and Rivera-Herrans is busy on another musical adapting "The Iliad."

Then there are the "Project Hail Mary" animatics.  I've found several set to clips of the audiobook, but many popular ones don't bother with narration or even music.  These illustrate additional scenes the fans wanted to see, like Ryland Grace meeting Rocky's unseen mate Adrian, or music video style tributes, or one-off gags.  Some seem to be extensions of fan comics and fanfiction.  Others exist solely as animatics.  Most are only a few seconds long, but there are dozens of these online, and the bulk of them were created within the few months since the "Project Hail Mary" film was released.  Some are extremely impressive visually, made by artists studying filmmaking and animation, while others amount to collections of notebook doodles.  However, they all  represent significant amounts of time and creativity being wielded by very enthusiastic people who want to share their love of "Project Hail Mary."

So, why is this happening now?  Why this sudden wellspring of amateur storyboarders and editors carving out a place in fandom for animatics?  I can think of a couple of contributing factors.  This is all conjecture of course.  First, it's easier to learn how to create comics and amateur animation than ever before, with free software and tutorials available everywhere.  Indie animation is experiencing a boom again, largely driven by web-based projects.  Second, animatics creation has become a more well-known activity as artists regularly share their portfolios and reels on social media for self-promotion.  They're far less labor intensive than full animation, but still provide chances to show character design, editing, and storytelling skills.  Also, you don't really need much artistic talent to do the most basic forms of it.  Witness Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol's hilarious pre-production animatics for their feature film, "Blackberry," based on McCarrol's Post-it note sketches.   

We also have to consider how these videos are being shared.  Remember that I first stumbled across this phenomenon through reaction videos for "Epic: the Musical" animatics - a genre of online content notorious for being susceptible to copyright takedowns.  The creators of "Epic" are very friendly toward fanwork and have benefitted from their popularity, but other creators are much more protective of their IP.  Fanmade videos using official footage or artworks are more likely to run into trouble, so using original artwork reduces the risk of being targeted.  It doesn't mean that animatics don't still get challenged and taken down all the time, however, especially when using licensed music.  What happens to all of the animatics when the official "Epic: the Musical" movie is released, is anyone's guess, but Kane Parsons recently went to bat for the "Backrooms" fan community, so there's no reason to feel pessimistic. 

In any case, I expect that fan animatics are here to stay.  I recently discovered that the "Epic: the Musical" is popular with the elementary school set, because the animatics are so accessible on Youtube and other platforms.  I suspect that they might have also quietly contributed to the hype for this year's "The Odyssey" movie - the live action one - because more viewers are now familiar with the story through the musical.  There are several other fandoms where animatics have become more and more prevalent, especially in the gaming and musical spaces.  This trend feels like it's only getting started, and who knows what project is going to blow up next?

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