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.