#extensionmodule

As recently stated in the Steven MaCleod post, this website is a great archive that takes 1000 frames from each of Alfred Hitchcock’s film’s and puts best story telling shots into a collection. A great resource for any story artist.

The Steven MacLeod has worked on such animated films as How To Train Your Dragon and The Croods. I originally come across his work through the CGMA - CG Master Academy video, where Steven creates a sequence of first pass rough storyboards whilst answer questions. There is a lot of great tips and experiences that come up in the conversation as well as an inspiring set of boards that work really well. He has very dynamic ways of composing and drawing and reiterates that storyboarding requires and understanding and eye for sequential art, so watch a lot of films.  Since storyboarding, beatboarding and thumbnailing I’ve found that I’ve found that it’s helped my confidence in being able to be less precious about my drawings and understanding the story dynamics through thinking like a director. I can obviously improve and one of those areas they I could improve is composition and character acting, however I feel as though my progression is quite steady. Anyway, here’s Steven’s blog where he uploads many frames from films so that you can study them, he recently posted (10th Jan 2016), links to additional websites that can help develop the budding story artist, with one of my fave’s being 1000 Frames of Hitchcock. http://framefilter.blogspot.co.uk/

7. Be sure that your animation and camera instructions in your action columns are extremely clear A good practice for story artists is to maintain a good level of communication and instructions for camera and animation. The reason for this is that sometimes you may not be working on your own, so people need help with guidance, especially if the animator is from overseas. 8.Watch your continuity A common mistake in animation, wade mentions that consistency of character positioning and understanding where they’re moving to along with placement of props and the environment and their sizes is important to be aware of between scenes. In CGI it is less hassle as it’s all rigged, modelled and mapped out but for 2d animation the items in the storyboard need to correspond correctly otherwise animators and layout artists will just follow what they see.  9. Don’t be lazy with your poses Animators in Wade’s experience (especially if they’re from overseas and get payed practically nothing), dont see it as their job to make quality story telling poses and just follow the basic instructions. Wade says that creating starting poses and end poses will help figure out the movement along with acting out and videoing the scene to get the feel for the pose/action. Wade mentions that once the initial composition is done, additional work isn’t as hard. I really like the little technique he give out mentioning that any additional action poses that you would like the animator to follow should be thumbnailed in the next panel, numbered and given a description in the dialogue box on how these work. 10.  When necessary, be sure that your light source is indicated As with before, to avoid animators making lazy decisions or accidental placement of shadows, Wade concludes that by putting your own shadows in and where you want them to fall (if shadows are a big factor for your shot), it gives the animators direction. Wade says you can also add arrows with notes on saying where the light sources is coming from, but most times it’s easier to just put the shadows where you want them to fall.  I think that it’s important to have an understanding of the light source regardless as lighting can affect your work significantly. 11. Make sure characters are acting in the correcting camera direction The understanding with this is similar to the axis and jump cut rule, you want your characters to be responding to each other. Screen/stage right and left must be adhered to so that it doesn’t look like characters are jumping around the scene (axis rule). Another important bit of knowledge that Wade bestows is that when a scene ends on an exit and then an entry, it’s better to have characters moving the same direction, for ease of the audience. 12.  Keep in mind that all important action should happen center screen A very useful tip from Wade is to keep your wits about the framing. Because of aspect ratio’s there are often parts of the screen that may be cut of, so understanding where to place the action is important. So to use a graphic design term, within the frame we need to draw or imagine a bleed to where the action will be cut off so then we can have an understanding of where it’s safe to place it. Wade continues to say that if you’re focusing on a characters action and it needs to be central, then never put them directly in the middle as there is too much negative space framing them and it makes them feel static. By composing your character to stay more towards the left or right the rule of thirds comes into play and has a better weight and depth to the shot. 13. Be sure that your posing is strong The last rule to use is the understanding of gesture and posing. Does your character’s action read well? Wade comments that a good line of action with a silhouette that reads through this is the best example. You should be able to tell what the characters’ intentions are via their movement and thus the silhouette is the purist form of understanding the action. A great tip by Wade is to have any arm actions moving away from the character rather than in front, so that the gesture in the silhouette is easier to read. Now that I’ve got these rules, I hope to use the knowledge gained to think carefully about my storyboarding technique. It won’t be perfect but by using these rules they may be a lot better.

My pinterest with research on storyboarding - I’m finding it hard to transfer most research made from Pinterest on to here with individual posts and it also makes putting them on both platforms redundant. However this link provides incite to Storyboarding techniques from various artists within the industry. 

I will be looking at more Red Letter Media videos to make sure the foundations to my music video for Abyss Walker, tighter.