Storyboardin

More LOA and Vertigo

Hello, golden mean.

Extreme Storyboarding

This week we did a bit of storyboardin'. I remembered most of the basics from Animation and Narrative way back in the day, but it was still good to freshen up on it. One thing I didn't know about before, and thought was a really handy idea, was drawing out floor plan, and placement of the cameras and props such. That makes it so much easier to figure out what's in the shot, and how it all lines up. Really fantastic.

I did a bit of searching, and came up with this site - It also runs through the basics, and provides links to storyboard layouts.

Also, here are some links to rough, medium, and cleanly rendered storyboards. In all of them, it's pretty easy to tell whats going on.

Lawrence and Vertigo

Here are some screen grabs of Lawrence of Arabia, and Vertigo.

The horizon lines are pretty straight, but the main elements are skewed - like the bridge, and sand dunes. So they're still visually interesting scenes.

Breakdowns

So this week we learnt about chopping a script up into managable pieces (which, unfortunately, only occasionally involves one of these).

There are also various colours/symbols for the different departments - like red for the lead actors, pink for animals, yellow for incidental characters, purple for animals, *'s for wardrobe, orange for locations etc.

It was cool, cause reading a script through is one thing, but once you start adding in the various cuts, and deciding on shots, that's when it really starts coming together in your head, and it's way easier to visualize whats going on. It's a little time consuming on the longer scripts, but definitely worth the time in the long run.

Textures and concepts

Texture references - CG Textures. Handy for close ups on animal furs, building textures, fabrics, etc.

Also, concept art for a story I was working on a while back. A rock golem:

And a dragon.

Edit: Found a quick render I did of the Golem. Modelled in Blender:

More Unnamables

Why? Because I'm not a slacker. Also, because I love drawing naked demon-goats.

I cant do it enough.

Looks like someone sneezed a little too close to this dude.

Unnamable

Ok, the Unnamable by H.P Lovecraft.

Some of the first descriptions of the unnamable came across as a mix of goat/faun, and gorilla, so I ran with that:

Then I went with a bit more of a deformed look - melted skin and horns and stuff. Not so fictitious. There were heaps of references to a "blemish", so I really tried to make it as visual as I could - half his face melted off? Sounds like a blemish to me.

Werewolves were pretty popular back then, so I tried that out too:

I went for a big scar on this one (again, referencing the blemish). Also tried to make the face beast-like, as people refered to it as more beast than human.

Bats, along with werewolves, also got a bit of hype back in the day, so I figured I'd give that a shot too. All going for the beastlike shape.

And, finally, just for giggles:

Fight your own dinosaur ... And win!

Found a kick ass forum thread - all concept art for Turok. Not only great images, but fight concepts, character concepts, weapon concepts, storyboards, vehicle concepts, environment concepts, a flow chart for a knife fight, heck, even detailed diagrams on how to kill your own dinosaurs. You can never be too prepared ...

Check it out here.

Preprod blog ... say that 5 times fast.

Aight ... Pre production ...



Rule numero uno - No cutting corners. As I found out, it could lose you your job, and make your future life, in general, hell.



Got teach'd the pre production phases (Breakin down the script, production design, storyboarding/animatics, layout).

Also the "mechanical functions" of preprod art:

• Context


• Sense of place


• Sense of time


• Setting

And emotional qualities, being mood and atmosphere ... which aren't the same thing.

We checked out a couple of clips - one being an asian dude sketching out a pretty sweet alien ... thing ... and another was a guy doing up the story "beats" (think train tracks, yo) for a hilarious "Little Mermaid" meets "Star Trek" kinda story. I really liked watching that one. Pretty cool stuff.

I will now attempt to do up some observational drawings.