The ACME Warehouse

"I keep trying to put as much of that classical drawing into everything I do. If I’m drawing the Beast, I’m studying Rodin before doing that. With Ariel, I mean I absolutely love François Boucher – his drawing style. [….] I realised that all the roots of everything that I love at Disney was actually done by classical artists before, so that’s how I’ve grown, through exposing myself to classical artists.” — Glen Keane (x)

Tuesday Tips - The Face Profile Something I use all the time when I storyboard. The profile is simple, direct, and conveys a lot of information about a character. A great deal of facial features are easier to define in a profile, such as the nose and mouth shapes. Use it to your advantage! It’s really useful when thumbnailing or doing gesture drawing. -Norm

and… today is my beloved mom’s birthday!!! happy birthday mami!

Tuesday Tips — Asymmetry in facial expressions. A lot of times, asymmetry will bring energy and movement to a pose or composition. More specifically, I feel like breaking the symmetry of a character’s expression is key to bring interest to it. Of course, there’s always a situation where there’s a need for symmetry. On top of my head, I can think of depicting a character who has an authority role, or the “undefeated champion of something”, or the “cold stone killer”, etc. So, a symmetrical facial expression usually means the character is: supremely bored, supremely confident, has no emotions, has a poker face, or is dead. Did I miss one? Symmetry in framing is also quite rare, but when handled by a master (Kubrick, Anderson), it’s undeniable. (If you have time, watch this: http://vimeo.com/89302848) Now, back to asymmetry in facial expressions. In general, it’s a great way to flesh out a character’s thought process. What is he/she thinking about? What’s their goal? I’m just touching the tip of the iceberg here. Way more tips to come in the future. Maybe next time, I’ll start to cover GESTURES. Completely unrelated to the subject, I recently read a list of tips from movie director Sam Mendes. Here’s my favorite: “Try to learn to make the familiar strange, and the strange familiar. …” Norm

Norm

Tuesday Tips - Gesture Drawing As a story artist, I feel like one of the most important technical skill to develop is the ability to draw things things clearly and fast. Practicing gesture drawing is, in my opinion, a good way to get better at it. I think it’s fun, too! Of course, you can draw from life and find unique things people and animals do, but I also think practicing gesture drawing from imagination is truly helpful. For instance, I usually do some gesture drawings of characters I’m about to work with in a sequence. It helps me find a short-hand to start building from. The simpler, the better. Especially early on a project, it really helps to find a quick way to draw a character over and over without repeating yourself all the time. I remember Life Drawing teachers telling me to “draw from within” and to “feel the weight”. It’s absolutely true, but in terms of storyboarding, other elements came to be as important to the process. Silhouette and a sense of “cartooning” is tremendously helpful to communicate certain things clearly to an audience. I’m only focusing on character posing right now (and this is just an introduction to the subject). Gesture drawing is very close to thumb-nailing, another ultra-helpful skill. More on that later. For those who want to spend some money on great books on the subject, I highly recommend you to pick up “Drawn To Life: 20 Golden Years of Master Classes of Disney Master Classes” (Vol. 1 and 2) , from Walt Stanchfield. Do it. Norm

Tuesday Tips - 2 Basic Storyboarding Rules Here’s 2 tips that are so simple it hurts when I forget them. In the process of re-boarding over and over, they can be lost in the shuffle sometimes. Drill these 2 tips into your head! -Norm

Tuesday Tips SUPER WEEK! — Silhouette This week only, I will post a tip everyday. Send me a personal message if you have any requests or ideas. Have  a great week! Norm

Tuesday Tips SUPER WEEK - More Acting Less Anatomy I’ve received a few message asking me how to draw simple generic characters (male, female) for story boarding, and what to do when there’s no character design. I will go over all that stuff, but I need to emphasize something first. I used to be obsessed with muscles and specific anatomy when I was drawing anything. Thanks to 90s superhero comic books and raging hormones, it kept me from embracing the storytelling aspect of sketching. Even later on in art school, I would spend WAY took much time on getting that perfect line quality. Animation Storyboarding squashed most of those inclinations out of me, and that’s good. I need to confess that I almost caved in and “cleaned up” the drawings on this page. This is how I draw when do a “first pass” or just trying to find ideas. That way, I don’t lose the energy or feel of my first instinct when approaching a sequence. Here’s something you’ll hear many times if you hang around story people: “It’s not about pretty drawings.” I agree and disagree to a certain extent, but the sentiment is right. It’s about telling a story and not letting other things (like lines, musculature, clothing, etc.) get in the way of doing so clearly. Once again, message me if you have requests for the next installments. Norm

Tuesday Tips SUPER WEEK - Feet I don’t often have to draw bare feet, unless I’m doing Life Drawing. When storyboarding, the focus is generally not on the feet. They also are usually covered (shoes, socks), or just not shown on screen that much. Nonetheless, it’s important to understand their functionality and general appeal. Keep details to a minimum, unless the character uses its bare feet to grasp things or do things with them most humans don’t. The best example of pushing feet to an extreme degree of functionality would be Disney’s Tarzan (one of my all time favorite). Other than that, don’t draw too much attention to them, but find appeal in its shapes. Norm

Tuesday Tips SUPER WEEK - Hands This is the first post about hands. Other posts about hands in the future will cover “hands in relationship to the body”, “different characters, different hands”, “expressive hands” and “hands touching things”. If you have suggestions for Tuesday Tips, write me a personal message. Norm

Griz

One of the many things to watch out while you’re drawing your composition is tangents.  Tangents are shapes that touches in an uncomfortable way.  There are many tangents, but the most common ones are continuous long lines and edges/angle that touches each other.  So just make sure you overlap your objects and avoid these.  

Tuesday Tips SUPER WEEK - No Straight Lines Curved lines > Straight lines. That’s it. Norm

Tuesday Tip - Beat Boards / Storyboards It can be a daunting task to just “start storyboarding”. Because there’s so many things to think about when storyboarding, we all need a roadmap to know where we are going. Beat boards are not even the first step to creating a story, but it’s often the clearest way to pitch an early concept to someone. It’s also very useful to plan out the larger beats of a large physical sequence (action, chase, etc.). This way, you don’t have to go on a limb for a week or two and have to redo it all if it doesn’t work. They’re sort of like your Key Poses in animation, but put on a story scale. Does that make sense? Message me if you have any questions or suggestions about future posts. Norm

Tuesday Tips SUPER WEEK - Push it! Clarity is probably the most important thing to think about at all time when boarding. Pushing your poses to an undeniable level of clarity will improve the clarity of the storytelling in general. Don’t leave space for uncertainty in posing out your characters. Your audience will be more engaged and entertained by the sequence. This is the last post for the Super Week. I hope you enjoyed it. Back on the regular schedule next week (Every Tuesday). Norm

Tuesday Tips - Clothing As always, simple is best. Clothing and fabric can be wonderful to explore in an illustration or detailed sketch, but it tends to get tiresome to overdo it in storyboarding. *special mention to Jeff Ranjo for his amazing quote! http://jeffranjo.tumblr.com/ If you have questions or requests, message us. We might just address those in future Tuesday Tips! Norm