Prepare to Board! by Nancy Beiman

This book is about visual storytelling and design. Three parts, Content, Technique, Presentation Visual scriptwriting (board-driven films?) The "Why" must precede the technique Easier for toons to break physics than story. Sound and visuals hang off the story. Character and Story can develop from each other [See also, Robert McKee's Story, where a character is a story, just not necessarily the one you're telling] Animators do the magic of bringing worlds and characters to life.

Part One: Story Content

First, Catch Your Rabbit

A story needs character and conflict, developed simultaneously.

Established early, and grab the reader.

Animation pre-production is "development" - the act of improving by expanding, enlarging, refining- growing the story.

ingredient 3: imagination - animation about what could possibly happen

feature animation starts withoutline/treatment, then developped visually.

story is the clothesline the gags & characters hang on

Linear and Nonlinear Storytelling

Linear: A, to B, to C. Or C, explained by B, explained by A.

Nonlinear: creating effect or mood rather than telling story

Limits are a foundation, not a box

It's easier to construct within limits, within guidelines.

Character created in isolation from story is just a design, not a personality.

Brainstorming stories from lists

Brainstorming lists of story elements:

characters 

anything, human, animal, anthro, feral, fantasy, alien, aquatic, avian

locations 

can vary greatly in scale, in space, under a microscope, in the laundry, in a pineapple under the sea?

situations and occupations 

occupations to vary up the situations that can be defined under "work"

conflicts 

weaknesses, desires, perils, opportunities

mix and match from the lists!

Draw thumbnails of the combinations; the characters and situations

A story should be told by the most interesting characters!

what if - how can we make it even more interesting by mixing it up

Researching Action to break from cliche

Take a sketchbook and draw everywhere, and gesture people in action

stronger poses, and better actor, to draw from the truth that's stranger than fiction

also draw pets

Quick Sketch and Thumbnails

rough thumbnail drawings are the starting point for characters and storyboards

Go beyond, PLUS ULTRA!

Adapt and exaggerate reality, not just copy

Believable, not realistic.

Visual hyperbole, caricature, stylize

Humans are hardest to exaggerate

Researching Settings and Costumes

You can find stuff on the internet - go look for art/culture of different times

Production can make use of all sorts of art comprehension and life experience

Learn a little about a lot of things

Study film too!

Types of storyboards

Live action boards rough guide for film's staging, for later filming. Live action is edited in post.

Animation boards create the acting and scenes along with the cinematography. Animation is edited in preproduction. Animation storyboard is the film.

Everything is indicated on animation boards because the film is edited from the boards before it is animated.

Animation editor creates and updates the animatic with the director, to set the pacing/length of each shot and check in finished footage as it's completed.

Comic Boards and Animation Boards

comics have something called storyboards, but it's more like a sketch of the layout, with all kinds of different frame shapes.

tv/film boards are designed for a specific final size, the frame does not change size

Animation board artist must be an actor - they craft the character's performance. Characters not yet designed may also use storyboard as reference.

Television Boards and Feature Boards

one-off films will be developing simultaneously, and involve a lot of experimentation and rework.

TV series will have character designs and scripts (usually) done before storyboarding starts. Are usually very fast, close to on model, illustrates the script.

All action/editing planned before animation begins.

• Features can take years
• TV animation is done on a tight budget, boarded in just a couple weeks.
• Commercial deadlines set in stone based on target airdate
• short films are typically done in months, as a student project

Storyboard planning makes the production run on time.

Putting Yourself Into Your Work

Your experiences, adventures, fantasies are good fuel for a character or story.

Use your life experience as material - people, pets, objects, etc.

Biographical elements make characters/situations more believable.

Give character or story a base that audience identifies with emotionally.

Emotional content and audience investment in the characters are necessary to hold an audience for the length of a 22min episode or a 90 minute film.

The Use of Symbolic Animals and Objects

furries are cool

animal characters may have human traits, human characters may have animal aesthetics.

Can represent countries with local animals (or not, to make a statement about crossculturalism or immigration!)

A story map - map of locations involved in the story, doesn't need to be detailed. Could just be a box of labeled circles!

Animation - to give life. YOu can animate inanimate objects.

Props have meanings too (e.g. bat vs club) - as well as their design.

The Newsman's Guide: Who, What, When, Where and Why

Think about the scene/story/character, what information is missing

Answer who/what/when/where/why/how

Use these details for your design.

Thinking about friends and pets and other people you can put aspects of them into the character designs.

THis is really just how to anthropomorphize, isn't it?

Do gesture drawings of people doing ordinary things.

Study life, study styles outside your comfort zone (don't rely on learning someone's style well), put a bit of yourself into the work.

Consider character relationships from the start.

Situation and Character-driven Stories

Two types of character films:

• situation-driven - story develops from a unique situation - sympathetic characters find themselves in unusual situations
• character-driven - story develops from a character's unique personality - no other character would react this way

Basic 3-Act story format:

1. Get your hero up a tree
2. Throw rocks at them
3. Get them out of the tree

Appealing characters make messages entertaining.

Stories interesting: mains use virtues and skills to overcome obstacles and reach a goal

Antagonist:

• self
• nature
• villain
• conflict
• situation

Conflict does not mean fighting/violence

Character stories have character arcs (most origin stories)

vs action stories where the situation goes through an arc around a force-of-nature character

Conflict evolves out of competing goals - make sure goals are clear!

avoid cliche/excessively stock characters

Stop if you've heard this one

Skip gimmicks, unless you can introduce a new variant on them.

Some stories work well with a known ending but an unknown path there! (murder mysteries, fairy tales, etc)

Defining Conflict

Many stories based on simple conflicts, internal or external obstacle

victims of circumstance

character weakness

appealing believable characters make plots seem fresh and new

Log Lines

essence of a story/conflict in a single line sentence.

Try a few different ways of summarizing a story, identify the more interesting ones - use your own interest as barometer.

Stealing the Show

Story should be told by the most interesting story.

Subplots that distract will break the story up into a jumble - make sure they support the main story!

heroes need goals, obstacles, and character flaws

Skip pop culture recognition as a shortcut to a laugh - it fades quickly, and dates the film.

Pop culture can be used if done so in such a way where it's inherently funny without getting the reference.

Parodies and Pastiches

Parody: mockery of preexisting material, requires knowledge of the source material to write and to enjoy.

Pastiche: remix of an existing genre, as sort of an homage. More likely to work.

What If? Contrasting the Possible and the Fanciful

Animation is fantasy - outside the limits of time, space, physics etc.

Best when avoiding duplicating reality

Weakest part is usually story - myth that "just a cartoon" means story is not important.

Animation actually needs more story/structure to hold it together, since the world itself works according to different rules - which need to be set and conveyed.

Reversals common in animation - highlight what is different vs reality, or inverted.

Things that don't make sense in our world are fine, so long as the rules they play by are consistent within the work.

Keep asking "What if?" to explore possibilities.

Beginning at the Ending: The Tex Avery "Twist"

Golden Rule of Animation Pre-production

ALWAYS know where, and how, your picture is going to end, before you start production.

Tex Avery's rules for analyzing a cartoon situation:

• Is it a good situation?
• What can you do to develop it/how are you going to finish it?
• Can you "switch" out cliche to do it in a new way?

Escalating gags don't change the scene/story, so you need a twist at the end to make it feel completed. This is not in the book.

Establishing Rules

Since animation can do anything, rules of the world are important - they establish the rules that allow dramatic tension and relief both to exist.

Appealing or Appalling? Beginning Character Design

Not "likeability" but "interest" - do I want to see what happens to this character, can I suspend disbelief?

Interesting to look at, but not distracting or difficult to animate.

The character needs to be able to do the actions it needs to do in the script.

Specifically, what you need to SHOW. A character with no fingers can play the piano, obscured - but not have fingers on the keys!

Reading the Design: Silhouette Value

A character should have identifiable silhouette.

Work on construction before details! *this comes up in The Silver Way too!

Construction Sights

Create a silhouette for each character at the start - even just size and general shape of the overall character.

Design characters from the inside out:

1. overall shape
2. break into different proportions for head/torso/legs
3. subshapes of parts, construction, ears, hair
4. details like textures, costumes, clothing, patterns

Shapes communicate - how grounded they feel, how soft or hard they are, how sharp or blunt, how balanced or off-kilter

Stages of age have specific effects on proportion - cartilagenous growth, bone development then decay, fat loss and gain and loss and gain

Use props to make generic characters more interesting, particularly background characters!

Foundation Shapes and Their Meaning

Foundation shapes of circles, squares, and triangles.

(book also lists cylinder, but that's not a shape)

Faces work on similar patterns, and varying the proportions creates different characters

Caricature is helpful as well.

Good design features:

• repetition
• variation
• exaggeration

The Shape of Things

Symbolic meaning of shapes:

Circle/oval

reassuring, trusting, nonaggressive, babby

Triangle

proactive, aggressive, dynamic, unstable

Square

sturdy, unmoving, stable, strong

These roles create stereotypes - easy roles for viewers to read - but be careful of only using stereotypes and falling into cliche.

MOre variety by playing forms against one another.

Going Organic

Organic designs have shapes that flow into each other, not just stuck together like a snowman.

Repeating identical foundation shapes can create a cookie-cutter/gingerbread man effect - avoid unless intentional!

Draw parts through other shapes to make the character cohesive

vary up the proportions for more uniqueness

Study anatomy so you know what creates the form of what you're designing.

Creating Characters from Inanimate Objects

Similar to designing organic characters, the foundation form is more visible in the final design as it's supposed to be recognizeable.

Don't just throw on a face, figure out how to use the form of the objects to suggest useful body parts to the animation.

You can also use objects, both organic and inorganic, to inspire character desgigns.

Across the Universe

Using the same elements - or the same inspirations can unify a design across a production, same "universe".

This can of course be broken when the story calls for it - characters literally from different universes.

Size Matters: The Importance of Scale

Scale can vary from sequence to sequence - a character that shrinks or grows, or different environments of different scale.

Insufficient information can create confusion - is it a small character or a large prop?

Create a character lineup to track the various sizes of characters at the start of a film.

Practicing your Scales

• Characters scale relative to one another
• relative to backgrounds and props
• perspective and camera placement
• parts of a character relative to others

Stereotypes of Scale

Villains larger than heroes - "Heavies" comes from the larger actors.

Comedically inverted by Laurel and Hardy as well.

The small cute character that suddenly becomes ferocious

Triple Trouble: Working with Similar Character Silhouettes

What if the story says the characters have to be the same size?

• simple: different colors
• more involved: different attitudes
• even further: different costumes from those attitudes

Films are restricted in time, so be careful to draw the audience's eye where needed.

Better composition: less flat-stage-layers-like

Getting Pushy

Apply caricature, animation grew out of the medium. Exaggerate design, proportion, perspective, staging.

Beauties and Beasts: Creating Character Contrasts in Design

Designing characters, most important: creating different body language and movement

The Great Dictator: Charlie Chaplin's Character Acting

Chaplin plays two parts, who look identical, and are differentiated only by acting.

I Feel Pretty! Changing Standards of Beauty

Standards of beauty change over time.

A little asymmetry helps with attractiveness.

Or symmetrical but not perfect.

S-curve design principle - the "line of beauty" (from Hogarth)

Curves and straights along an S curve.

Curves and straights create slow and fast read lines respectively, creating a rhythm in the flow of the image/design.

A Face that Only a Mother Could Love?

Cuteness usually involves proportion distortions similar to how babies look.

Gods and Monsters: Contrasting Appearance and Personality

Faces are based on an inverted triangle - eyes on either side, and nose and mouth underneath.

Breaking the triangle creates disturbing looks, designs where the features don't seem to relate are unappealing.

Highly deformed faces yield monsters - though the character can be played against their appearance.

How to make period characters attractive?

1. Research styles/the fashion silhouette
2. User more than one reference source
3. Draw a variety of designs as exploration, and synthesize their best features
4. Work from an actual person or people as reference
5. Draw from memory as well as life
6. Avoid literalism/hyperrealism.

Animation is not reality - it's much better!

Location Location Location: Art Direction and Storytelling

The art director sets the film's period/location/prop/character design/style.

Setting is important, along with props, to influence the path of the story.

Important objects should be visually prominent in boards and backgrounds.

Location planning:

• Atmospheric sketches
• floor plan or map
• master backgrounds
• background details and props that will be interacted with
• characters to show scale

Location never just location - there is a story behind why they are how they are even if that is not the story we are telling.

Helps with suspension of disbelief, that this is a world that has been lived in (or not, just arrived in, if that's what's called for)

Opening shots are the introduction.

Characters and backgrounds can depict emotions.

K.I.S.S. Your viewers don't have hours to spend analyzing all the details in backgrounds.

Your scenes make statements, can also make story contrasts between them.

Questions for considering a film setting:

• Time period for the story? What year, season, time of day, geography?
• Visually interesting time period with an aesthetic?
• What shapes and colors suggest the period?
• What materials are objects made of?
• If natural, what kind of natural setting? What colors dominate?
• Is the story on this planet/dimension, or another?
• What are the rules of the fantasy world?
• What's the story's tone - serious? Whimsical?
• What mood colors do you need for the scene/story?
• Is the scene supposed to match the characters or contrast them?

Backgrounds contain elements of the personalities/tastes that inhabit them?

What suggests the fantasy setting - is there a running theme?

Scale of characters to background

"Nothing harder to do than nothing" - specifying details make your work easier!

Part Two: Technique

Starting Story Sketch: Compose Yourself

Tonal Sketches

Referencing the environment and character lineups

Story sketches - rough drawings will work if the shape of the characters is distinct

Selection, simplification, emphasis. Include what is important to the drawing!

Should read from across the room - use tone to make it read

• Line, value (light and shadow)
• silhouettes and shapes (pos & neg space)
• texture
• color (sometimes)

Optical center is near the top third - maybe 0.618? Not in the middle of the page.

Stick to four tones, these are quick drawings to stage the work, not final illustrations

Strongest tonal contrast draws focus, should be on greatest importance.

Graphic Images Ahead!

Tone defines form:

• silhouette
• dark against light
• light against dark
• split dark/light on each
• rim shadow
• tonal modeling of planes

Avoid clutter - make sure to distinguish the character from the background

May not even need more than a color card or simple tonal background if it's a closeup

The Drama in the Drawings: Using Contrast to Direct the Eye

Eye is drawn to the area of greates contrast

Eraser useful to "carve out" highlights or lighten tones

The Best Laid Floor Plans

Simple floorplan can be useful

Three quarter angle, in isometric 3D

Tonal background sketch - kind of an establishing shot reference

Abstract locations or ones where the background layout doesn't really matter don't need floorplans

Structure: The Mind's Eye

How is the scene staging - whose viewpoint are we adopting, whether through their eyes or over their shoulder.

Whose eye level is the camera on?

Work for an interesting variety of shots - but in the best way to stage the action.

Closeups for inner thoughts and reactions, longer shots for distance and acting.

Low or high angle shots can show dominance or contrast in a shot.

• Work for clarity of staging
• Simple staging is always best
• Make sure your shots work into one another (hookups!)
• use good film grammar.

Drawing the camera on the floorplan can help you figure out where everything in the scene goes.

Change the camera in relation to the background across cuts, or the characters will simply appear to be disappearing/reappearing on the same background

Don't animate the camera

or at least, not until you've designed everything else and determined a story point calls for a camera move.

Design your frames

apply design principles to your panels.

Watch out for tangents

connecting lines that create flow or association that shouldn't be there.

Use tonal values, not pure line

You need tones to make the panels read quickly

Color should only be used when absolutely necessary, when the story/action calls for it to highlight something

Mind the safe areas

keep characters away from the borders and interacting with the frame unless you're trying to cut things off or interact.

Roughing it: Basic Staging

Keep to four tones: light, dark, two middle tones

Line defines contour

the shape or silhouette of the object/character

Tone defines dimension

both volume and depth

Darkest part of a shadow appears nearest light (because of AO and adaptive contrast perception)

Eye path goes: optical center > center of interest > flow

We tend to follow reading direction (LTR for most Western cultures)

Watch the 180 degree rule! Keep the camera on one side of the line between the characters

Use tonal variation to highlight a character in a crowd

Arrows for direction of motion

Storyboard is the basics of character performances - fast motion may be drawn on the same frame even!

Use additional panels to depict continuing action in a scene

Each panel should contain ONE idea.

New panel for each new action.

I'm Ready for My Close-up: Storyboard Cinematography

Profile provides best silhouette - make sure screen direction is observed!

3/4 view is usually more interesting than front view.

Center of the frame should be in dynamic poses to avoid splitting the frame.

Break front view with off center to make it read better.

Overlapping shapes create depth - also tonal depth.

Closer elements are usually more vivid/detailed.

Fog to isolate focus

Boarding time: Getting With the Story Beat

Animation develops complex forms from simple beginnings.

Storyboard artists function as a combination of director and editor - they create the blueprint for the film.

Storyboard panels describe an idea - not standalone drawings, they must communicate instantly or be revised

Storyboards are different from graphic novels - the panel size is set and are designed to convey visuals in changing time, rather than environmental content.

Working to the Beat: Story Beats and Boards

Animation story is broken down into beats - turning points in the story.

Initial planning: Beat boards or outline boards - illustrate the beats the story MUST hit.

The storyboard equivalent of pose to pose.

Beats of the story, beats of each scene, beats of each view

Do You Want To Talk About It

Each beat board should be one sentence of your synopsis.

Think nursery rhymes - where each line is its own thought and visual.

1. Identify the beats
2. Thumbnail the locations and times (slug lines) of each beat
3. Make revised more elaborate beat boards
4. Test tonal values (squint at your panels)
5. You can use two panels to show the change a beat involves
6. Test your beat board against an audience before going further!

The Big Picture: Creating Story Sequences

Refine story - break it down into sequences.

Sequences add subplots, give film structure.

Stories often divided into 3 acts

Each act broken down to sequences

Sequence

a series of related scenes illustrating a story beat

Sequences may be a single location, or an event happening through multiple locations.

Panels and Papers: A Word about Storyboard Materials

The storyboard is the script of the film.

In TV animation, it's a standard format.

Feature boards are more exploratory, and more revised over time.

Also good for indie films

Acting Out: Structuring Your Sequences

film > acts > sequences

Sequences given descriptive names and numbers in films

Sequence numbers may change as the animatic is edited

A-B-C Sequences: Prioritizing the Action

Prioritize scenes A: essential points, MUST be in film B: important, can be shortened/restaged if time/budget require it C: gags, extra story material, can be cut if needed

Act I: Get your character up a tree Act II: Throw rocks at them Act III: Get them back out of the tree!

Arcs and Triumphs

Character arc

When the story's action changes the hero in some way.

Great for film, problematic for episodic television where the characters suffer a "brain reset" for the next episode

(You can still arc the beginning/end of a season tho, usually)

NO growth makes for a flat character. Even if a character must stay unchanged, they can be pushed out of their comfort zone, wander around a bit, then return to safety.

Each storyboarder must be familiar with the outline - how their sequence relates to the picture

Naming Names

Incidental characters named, to make it easier to reference them, even if they're never named on screen / in audio.

Patterns in Time: Pacing Action on Rough Boards

Presentation governs interest as much or moreso than the content.

"It's not what you do, it's how you do it"

Film has a language, vocabulary, and structure.

New panel whenever there is:

• change of scene
• change of emotion
• change of action
• change of framing (moving camera)

Action sequences use a lot of panels - everything is choreographed, even if it looks spontaneous!

Acting also blocked in, changes of attitude and expression.

Don't rely on the animatic to pace the film - use the camera angles and cuts in the panels

Storyboard artist should be fluent in film - cinematic approach not just ideas.

Workbook

an intermediary stage between boards and layout - a polished board, with detailed camera moves. More like TV boads.

Stage your action in thumbnails first. Action scenes may use more panels, acting scenes will be more difficult to nail.

Post-it note revisions or mini boards are great for thumbnails.

Background may be omitted in subsequent panels where the camera has not moved.

One idea per panel.

First story Then action/acting

Dramatic action can become comic if the timing is right - or if it's held out too long!

Do not drive home an emotional point with a sledgehammer - less is more.

If there's no change in attitude or acting, two panels may cover a lot of dialog.

New panel for each attitude change.

Excessive boards, depicting every key pose, is "animating the storyboard" and taking work away from the animator (or wasting time - the animator may throw out the boarded acting and redo it)

Use symbols for transitions

• fade in
• fade out
• cross dissolve
• truck or pan
• swish pan

Use a variety of short and long scenes, filmic punctuations (transitions) to avoid visual overload. Don't pace too fast - a new animation shot takes longer to read than a live action shot!

Climactic Events

There are various "hills" in the rollercoaster of action in a film, it's important to pace them right!

Can be helpful to chart out the tension and climaxes, to know where you should be building more tension. See also Beating the Story

Present Tense: Creaging a Performance on Storyboard

On your own film:

You have

• outline
• beat boards
• rough character models
• atmospheric sketches
• sequence definitions

Ready to create the in-depth boards!

On TV production, given a production bible with:

• characters
• props
• backgrounds
• script handout

Feature boards:

• work as a team
• lead by story head
• each artist given one sequence or a few pages of scripts

1. story head works out sequences and beats with film directors
2. creates beat boards
3. assigns artists to sequences
4. each artist works separately to thumbnail sequence in place with the film
5. storyhead reviews/approves each thumbnail pass
6. artists draw rough boards
7. animatic of roughs for directorial review
8. reworked, cleaned up into presentation boards
9. continued revisions and reworks

Sometimes you will have a

storyboard-driven production

the storyline designed on the boards, then scripts derived from them

Story head

third director, focusing on the story

1. handouts from story head
2. thumbnail pass
3. rough storyboard/animatic
4. rendered into presentation boards (depending on production workflow)

Storyboarder may have influence over characters not yet designed

Good panels that convey how a character acts may be used to create "action only" model sheets

On a film, the script may be revised if it doesn't work in boards - so be open to change!

Hardest to board: an original story, exploring it on the board!

Caricatures of famous voice actors can be a crutch in character design.

Dangerous to base a character around a specific talent, especially if not yet hired.

Visuals and story construction should be supported by the voice work, not voice versa

Working with Music

A good scratch track will help you time your action, especially when assembling story reels and animatics.

Secret to a good musical number - the songs don't just "happen", they fall on major story beats or turning points and help advance it.

They are a commentary on the action or exploration of an emotional point - don't use them in place of a story point however (though a story point can happen in cutaway from a song: Ariel's departure during "Under the Sea" for example)

Few panels for each 1-2 lines of a song just like a script. Recognizable beats and story beats!

Visualizing the Script

How to work from a script

points to consider:

• What is the tone - dramatic, comical, satirical, tragic?
• What do the characters feel - happy, apprehensive, indifferent?
• Who is the viewpoint from - are we following a specific character, and what height? This determines camera angles
• How does the action progress and why?

1. Break down the scene by idea, rough sketches to analyze each setting
2. Decide what is important in the sequence, what has focus, the above points
3. Draw thumbnails to explore staging