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Storyboardingis the foundation of the cinema...you have to master so many elements at this stage in order to have a great film. Staging: how the characters and elements fit into the shot. Cinematic language: where is the camera in relation to the actors, props, and environment. Character: what is your character thinking, feeling, doing? Posing: strong poses and action. Not too mention: Lighting, Continuity, Editing, Timing, and finally Music and Sound Design. All these elements have to be considered at the storyboard stage. This is why I truely love this stage of film making. You are the director, actor, writer, and cinematographer all wrapped up into one. I have storyboarded on projects like Cartoon Network's "Edd, Ed and Eddy", Nickelodeon's "Rocket Power", Mondo Media's "Thugs on Film", and a short film that screened in Sundance back in my CalArts days. Below are just a few examples of my story work...they showcase the diverse styles and thought processes. The final link is an animatic that basically puts the storyboards into cinematic action. |
Thugs on film was one of the first web cartoon series on the internet. I was working at Mondo Media (Happy Tree Friends) back in 2000 in San Francisco during the gold rush of the internet! It was a crazy time...tons of prospectors looking for venture capital money. I was truely at the right place at the right time...things were definetly happening there. I always felt like I was riding the wave of opportunity. I first got involved with cartooning, then animation seem like the next big thing and got involved with interactive cd-rom, when that dried up, I landed in TV, and then the dot com boom. When that finally died, I earned my M.F.A. and proceeded to teach. There's not too many Animator's with an M.F.A. so I feel fortunate to have a great job teaching animation and story boarding to a new generation of mischiefs. Anyways, Thugs was a great web cartoon...Stubby and Cecil. They ended up in all the wrong spots...which made it more joy to draw them! My team pumped out one 5 minute cartoon a week. I would often fedex my boards from Vancouver B.C. |
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Cartoon Network's, "Edd, Ed and Eddy" was created by Danny Antonucci up in Vancouver, BC. My good friend Pat Pakula invited me out to work on the second season. This is the only sequence that I salvaged from the xerox pile. The lead story board artists, Scotty Underwood, was a great teacher and story artist...what is extraordinary is that he is 8 years my junior. But you are never too old to learn and too young to teach. I learned to check my ego at the door and try to learn how to be a better story artist. He can whip out a 22 minute episode all by himself. A typical episode consists of about 300 to 400 pages, I mean PAGES of boards...multiply that by 3 and you have about a 1000 individual panels. I accomplished 20 semi decent panels here...but it's all about revision, revision, revision....Ohh the life as a production artist! |
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This sequence was part of my original idea for "Pulcinello". It was more comical and surface humor. More like Buster Keaton instead of Freud. These drawings aren't necessarily beautiful or rendered to much detail, but they convey the exact information I need. It's different from a television production in that I'll be directly animating 3D characters from this sequence so I don't need to have all the specific details and production notes. In a T.V. production...the storyboards are shipped to China or Korea where they are translated into 2D animated shows. You can't have ANYTHING ambigious or you end up paying for extra footage. But in a personal film, as long as the staging and posing are clear it will help set up lighting and layout issues for the production pipline. The storyboard is the most creative and challenging aspect of film...it sets up all the emotional, technical, and timing foundation. Without a good solid storyboard, the production risks a perilous fate...in a way, it's a film within the film. |
