How to Storyboard Smarter

storyboarding is a hard job ranging from cinematography acting and a bit of animation altogether they form the visual structure of the sequence whether it's to tell a story the best way it can through visuals or to lay out the foundation for other departments such as animation character design and background art i've storyboarded for both feature animation and tv animation and based on my years of experiences i want to show you some tips that i've learned from professionals before me and how they're able to board faster efficiently and economically and enough for a [Music] deadline hey guys it's nico pentua and today i'd like to talk about how you can board faster smarter and economically with these tips whether you're boarding a small scene an animated feature an animated show maybe it's for short maybe it's for live action or maybe the cutscenes for video games or maybe you're trying to pitch a product whatever it is storyboarding is a great way to pitch those ideas you want to be able to have a few tools and tips that can help you board efficiently while using those same tools and tips for future projects or future storyboard work i'm going to divide this talk into three different segments the first one being what you might want to have beforehand the second is the planning stage and the third being the actual execution or the actual boarding process the first thing that you might want to do is to have your scene in a written form and preferably in screenplay format now there's several reasons why i would suggest screenplay format and the most notable is that it represents more of what you're seeing on screen in terms of how it's paced and how it's formatted there's a certain rule or tip that a lot of people like to follow which is one page of screenplay represents one minute of film and you can actually use this as a guideline in terms of how you pace out or board out your scenes i'll talk more about that soon even if your boards are board driven meaning that there's no actual script or screenplay i think it's a good practice to have something written down so you know how to structure out your boards if you want to focus more on atmosphere or some gags write them down so they act as beats beats for you to hit when you actually board it out i remember story artist and director simon wells gave a talk about his process at dreamworks where even though he didn't follow a screenplay format he would actually write those specific shots down such as writing like describing the angle the close-up very specific camera notes for him to draw out speaking of planning there's another side that you might want to start considering and this is something that i learned from feature animation as a trainee was just to really think about what your scene is about when me and a few friends were trainees at dreamworks we were each given a scene to board out but we all try to show off everything of what we can do as story artists we try to put comedy drama and action in each of our sequences but what happens is that each of those scenes and sequences become convoluted so it kind of loses its point or what it's trying to tell you about certain characters so when you're boarding out a scene start thinking about what to prioritize whether it's a character's emotional arc whether it's emphasizing a single character's introduction or you just want to showcase action and how that action elevates the story understanding the point of your scene can help you deliver better boards or better shot choices that actually help push the story forward or emphasize the story weaker characters are generally shot with a higher angle shot dominating characters are shot with a low angle shot you can make a scene feel emotionally chaotic and claustrophobic if the boards sort of resemble that or it can make a character feel alone and tiny in the world by making that character really tiny in the composition with just big negative space there's a saying when you look at your script read in between the lines meaning find the actual emotional value behind the story and the plot and what is the main emotional point that you're trying to get across and that's why i think everyone should start writing their sequences beforehand now let's talk about planning for the actual storyboarding process i think with storyboarding you kind of do need to plan and establish a lot of things like layout the character placement and things like that before you actually go right ahead and board unless that stuff comes natural to you but if it doesn't then here are some of my tips so the first thing i would suggest you do is to sort of draw a map or blueprint of your sequence so what i would do is basically draw a map with the layout the scene the set design and then figure out where your characters are going to be or where they're going to move around sometimes i like to draw what's called a master shot which is basically a shot that's not really in the sequence at all but it's just there to show everything in the scene i usually just draw a top down view but if i need more clarity i would draw it with more depth i would draw sort of like a diorama or a 3d layout of the scene and then draw in those characters and set designs and whatever and then what i would do is sort of draw a line somewhere that determines my 180 degree rule or in other words the staging line so when i start planning out camera angles and shots for all the characters i try and keep it consistent so i try to keep my camera behind or at one side of the staging line as much as i can with flat 2d shots or styles you can actually just like take one master shot and just crop out some bits and elements from that master shot to basically represent your actual storyboard shots but sometimes i like to get really creative with my shot angles so i use my master layout or my master shot and then just use that as a reference to draw different various shots in thumbnail form and from here on i would just thumbnail different shots that i feel like would be great for the sequence and you can come up with many different shots as much as you can come up with different variety and what you have is a really first pass of the thumbnail stay there are several ways that you can approach the thumbnailing stage the first one was something that i used to do a lot in the past which was just to get a separate piece of paper draw the frames of my panel and then just roughly thumbnail the shots that i want now the reason for this method is to see how each shots connect and cut to each other and often times i'll write the dialogue underneath the panel an approach is something that i learned a lot from tv animation which is to get your actual script and then board on top of your script page so what it'll look like it's sort of like you're making tiny film reels along with your script but the great thing about this is that it kind of forces you to think more economically in terms of how many shots that you're using or how you can get away with a lot just with one panel or one shot and if you use that mindset where one page of screenplay represents one minute of film or footage you can kind of measure out the pace of your boards but some screenplays will have really long description where it'll just be more elaborate there's a lot more information that a single panel or a few panels can't justify it and will probably need its own page of thumbnails but other than that boarding on top of your screenplay is a practice that i see a lot more in tv and in feature animation now if you were doing that step or you had a master shot and you were just planning out different shots from that master shot reference then you can actually just copy and paste some of those panels to fit accordingly to your screenplay or whatever thumbnail format you're using so instead of having to come up with new thumbnails you can just copy and paste the ones that you did from your planning stage that can save a lot of time can't it then there's the actual execution of turning these thumbnails into actual board panels for your storyboards so if you're using a software for storyboarding so let's say photoshop storyboard pro or any hand-drawn animation software what you can do is just copy those thumbnails and then just paste it in your storyboard project and then just enlarge it and you have a first rough pass this is really effective if you're working in a really tight deadline for example so even if you can't fully polish or clean up those panels at least you have a placeholder for those upcoming panels you have a very rough pass that you can sort of pitch around sure you might have to do some connected tissue work so let's say if some panels just cut abruptly you can kind of draw out if some of them have camera moves if there's more acting poses i would say just do them roughly because for a rough pass you just want to get the overall structure down first and the reason why i tell you to keep it rough at this stage is just in case there are revisions that need to be made if you're working under someone that person might tell you to make some big major changes or redos besides the cleanup stage can happen later once everything is confirmed once everything is good to go for that cleanup stage now let's talk about the cleanup stage because when i board i still keep it loose i still keep it very bold and in a way crude because i personally don't think boards should be fully detailed i think they should just get the overall idea across so i will still draw really loose really economically enough so that you can kind of get what's happening in the shot or who's on the shot and if it's not clear enough then i would make another layer where i actually start tying down those drawings even though it's still a bit loose i will clear up things like the face some of the overall shapes some silhouette language and some major shapes that resemble more of the character design now this varies between productions so some productions don't really care how much detail you put into it whereas some really rely on you having really clear detailed drawings to be passed on to the layout team for animation and aside from clean lines there's another thing that can make your panels look really finished if you just add simple tones so a dark tone a mid grape tone to a light gray tone you can give a really scribbly panel or drawing more depth and more information just with a few tones and in most cases it helps clarify a few things and clarifies the overall staging of the characters and the setting so my big takeaways for this is to just draw loose and use basic tones and it doesn't have to be shading or shadows it can just be a film that can make a messy drawing look a bit more clear the point i'm trying to get across is to not overwork your boards so it looks over labored but to work in a way that's efficient smart and economic that can help you at least get the overall points the overall structure of your sequence eventually you'll come across your own solutions when it does come to boarding sometimes it could be a software thing where a storyboarding software allows you to do all the camera moves without having to redraw different panels sometimes i have to board in adobe photoshop and adding tone is so tedious in photoshop that i actually had to come up with my own action that autofills a white fill behind the character so i have a solid matte instead of having to manually do those brush strokes underneath that character layer some friends of mine started utilizing blender where instead of having to redraw backgrounds they would just make a really simple 3d model and use the grease pencil to just draw their characters on top of those 3d models some productions actually use stickers for their characters so they have a sticker for the torso a sticker for different head rotations instead of having to redraw those characters again and again they just have an improvised rig if that's what you'd like to call it and a lot of board artists that i've worked in the past have their own way of working when it comes to storyboarding but the tips i've shared are the ones that are commonly used and the ones that have actually helped my boarding process anyways that's all i wanted to talk about happy boarding interested in learning hand-drawn animation or learning how to finish an animated shot from beginning to end have a look at the store where you'll find the complete introduction to 2d animation video course tutorials and other resources learn classical animation approaches drawing lectures techniques and other process videos visit the store through the link in the description below

Channel: Toniko Pantoja

Views: 130,514

Keywords: Toniko Pantoja, Youtube, Animation, Tutorial, Advice, Lesson, Vlog, Adobe, Photoshop, Animate, Flash, After Effetcts, Premiere, Video, Film, Drawing, Tips, Gestures, storyboard, story, storyboarding

Id: AyDbN1hpFzA

Length: 12min 17sec (737 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 16 2020