Idea – Storyboards: Week 02

Opening Shot

It has been a busy week but I managed to get through most of the storyboards for the film. Rather than try and make a series of thumbnails, a bad idea by the way, I decided to commandeer one of the sketchbooks I hadn’t used yet for the task. Although index cards are normally preferred, I’ve been running around too much to make a proper storyboarding wall. Instead I’ll scan the pages and put them into my app so I can edit the animatic on my phone.

The most difficult parts of the film to conceptualize are two “story within a story” sequences which need to be bold graphically and have very simple story arcs. The shot setup is a bit odd in that the doll has to flip the pages off then have the wind carry the pages behind the foreground so they can be framed over the doll’s shoulder. Then once framed the pages need to continue flipping through even when they are not being torn off the stack. I don’t have this sequence shown here, but I’ll make sure my animatic is shared at some point.

Look below for my “how not to storyboard” section and a few sample storyboards from the upcoming film!
How not to storyboardLooking Up

On the left are a collection of thumbnails from my sketchbook where I thought the layout, and action, were getting worked out pretty well. Not really. The main story is getting put down on paper but the thumbnails are so small it is tough to get the layout and even placed in a row they don’t have much continuity; the page is downright confusing.

On the right is just one, very simple, frame from that sequence. Even without much of a background the frame works much better because the character is fully developed and outlining the action in blue helps the eye know what is going to happen in the scene.

Walking Across

The above image is an even better example of a fully laid out shot. The layout is easy to understand and the action is fully thought out. All of these images need a bit more work to be fully fleshed out, but they at least provide enough information for an animatic.

Check back next week for the animatic!