 Sometimes when I am begrudgingly yet dutifully working on drawings, a new character comes to mind. I get so eager to hold on to it that I sketch it down, and then I flesh it out more. Soon enough, I wind up with a vague plot with dramatic plot points and intense sequence for this character to engage in. “It’s going to be an epic! Yay!” I tell myself.
Then it hits me: This is a highly detailed, highly rendered character with elaborate happenings, and it’s going to take a lot of time to produce on my own. I remember that other great epic I wanted to make with that ambiguous character doing intense things for vague reasons. I better make this an epic short, or slowly chip away at it over time. “But wouldn’t it be great if it was some lengthy epic in which you connect with this character?” I press myself. Yes…but if it’s not tightly developed soon, it should be a short to avoid a potential headache. Alternatively, this hits me: Maybe if I make it a less detailed, less rendered character, I can make this epic work. Sure, it’s not as serious-looking as the original design, but it’s efficient. But now why would I try to make a clever epic when it can be a punchy short? Not that simplified styles must be put into shorts and highly detailed styles must be long productions, but I get a quick, series-formatted feel for anything that doesn’t have a serious-toned style. Eventually, I have to come to terms with why I drew this character in the first place. Maybe the patchy plot points could lead to a simple physics-based animation exercise. Or it could lead to a storyboard that highlights the staging of events. Or it could very well just be a one-off character design sheet. All of these ideas compete for my time and attention, but instead of getting too excited and immediately stressed, I have to put them through an honest vetting process to figure out how much more time I should commit to them, if any at all. And once a project is completed, I can then focus on the next great lengthy epic that will ultimately turn into a 90-second short. I began this short sequence with a simple plot. However, I didn’t know how or when it would end. I knew if I started to storyboard it from the beginning and chronologically proceeded, then I would be stuck past the point of the plot. So, I resolved to try to think of the storyboard as “keyframes” to a story. In animation, keyframe drawings give the artist an idea of the defining states that will make up the animation. The animator will look through the keyframes and begin to develop what frames should lie between them to create the illusion of motion. I used this keyframing idea to put together this storyboard from start to finish. This first came to my awareness in my storyboarding class in college. I was assigned to lay out a short story in six panels. Then, I was to go back and add six more panels, one between each of the original set of panels. After years of convincing myself that I wouldn’t use this method of storyboarding, I decided to give it a shot with this one.  One immediate proactive I’ve found with this is that I can finally see the end to this project instead of a blank! It might not be the last shot, but I now know what I am finishing with. This contains, at least, the last action the main character will make.  This is the first set of “breakdown” panels that go between the first set of panels. With the first set, I know the series of events that will take place between panel 1 and panel 6. Now I can illustrate even more important beats that come between panel 1 and panel 6. There is no “breakdown” panel between panel 4 and panel 5, as I thought it wasn’t necessary to bring out yet.  Here, I begin to define the opening scene, keeping in mind that panel 1 has already been drawn.  This becomes a straight-ahead page, as each beat is sequential between panel 1 and 1a. I decided to use capital letters to label panels between a number and lowercase letter.  This page then picks up after panel 1a, and I have to remember the panels that have already been drawn. Because they were significant beats to the story, I can remember them fairly easily.  This is another straight-ahead page to complete the necessary beats of the story. As this process continues, I decide to omit panel 3.  Several pages later, I refer to panel 6 to develop the final panels of the storyboard. Panel 6 ended up not being the last panel as it didn’t adequately deliver the “punch-line” of the story.
Now that I have laid out all of the panels, I can piece them together. The entire storyboard can be found here. I may consider using this method in the future as it causes me to think early on about how the piece should end. |
ArtistDiamond Stewart is interested in hand-drawn animation, comic book art, video games, and music. 
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