Friday, July 04, 2008

Ready for Storyboard Artists: Setups to storyboards

SCENE SETUP
Jim Smith has prepared scene setups for the first couple cartoons. For each scene we hand out setups of the basic BG and situation to the storyboard artists. (They aren't all in color and finished like this)


They are more like these Jim Smith drawings:



We also hand out my outline of the scene (and the whole story)


OUTLINE
Then what I expect from the storyboard artist is to sketch the continuity. The drawings don't have to be cleaned up, but you do need to be able to draw the characters well -understand their basic shapes and their proportions.
You also need to understand the story and the personalities of the characters, so you can draw the acting. I will help by giving you some of my sketches and acting out the whole scene, either in person or over the phone.
The drawings have to have life, be specific and put the point of each gag and story point across without ambiguity.
Your storyboard should provide a strong framework for the pose/layout artist who will do tighter versions of the storyboard roughs and add some breakdown poses.

I'm not looking for wild abstract crazy drawings. I need strong acting that is in context of the scenes and story. And of course is funny. Funny and CUTE to steal a great trademarked phrase.

So if you have experience doing either storyboards or layouts and can draw both cartoony and fairly solid, and are going nuts from working on formula stuff, and are funny, then I need you.

It's a different way of doing storyboards than the studios use, looser in one way, tighter in another.

It's a lot of laughs if you have good control over your storytelling and acting. There is room for your gags too if you can make us laugh and keep the gags in context of the stories.

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Other jobs available:

Designing Setups:

This is like drawing illustrations of a story for a Golden Book. You take the essence of a scene, design the background around the character and plan it so that the board artists and layout artists can have the characters move around and act out the scenes.

Layout or Advanced Cleanup:

Someone who can interpret the storyboard drawings into finished pencil layouts that will work for animation.

You have to be careful to not lose the life of the board sketches, while adding the details and construction.
I'll do another post on this soon.