Storyboard Inspiration

After having a task based on story boarding, it's made me realise the importance of them and them being as accurate and as informative as they can be despite lacking in visual detail. From the session I have realised how difficult it is to take a story or an idea for a story and convert it into a concise and easy to understand story board format. I think the reason for this is due to the fact it takes a lot of independent thinking that wouldn't always translate well to someone else's mind frame, for example picking out the key scenes from the story and even in the story board format making the narrative easy to understand and simple to follow.

There is a number of things I think I will try and consider and incorporate into any story boards based on how professionals work and layout their work. Firstly, keeping the actual drawing simple on the storyboard seems to be a common feature, yet it's easy to understand because of the composition of the panels. I think it's important to prioritise composition and action over aesthetics. Another aspect I want to be able to take from the work I've seen is the ability to use rough notes of a visual and written nature in order to make the flow of the story and visuals easy to interpret and understand since being able to do this is very important and necessary in order to be a good storyboard artist.

Brave an animation created by Pixar Studios and directed by Mark Andrews and

Brave Storyboards

Brenda Chapman. The story boards for the film were created by storyboard artists; J. Garett Sheldrew, Ted Mathot, Maxwell Brace and Scott Morse. Below is a scene from the film in it's original story boards. There's a few things you notice about the story boards at a glance, first of all the storyboards lack colour and remain only as values at this point in production stage, perhaps the colour palettes and colour schemes for the film was decided later on and lighting etc was decided at this point. Second of all the amount of detail in the individual panels decreases as it moves away from the camera, but the only section in the scene with a real amount of detail is the focal point of the scene for example a character. Perhaps this is a technique that the artist used in order to pass on information the the animators about what to focus on during the scene. Within the storyboard you can also see a huge range of different camera angles and types of shot, from close ups to wide shots. Some really interesting compositions have also been used like the shot on the sixth row down and the third panel across where the camera is positioned as if you were looking past someone to view the character in the scene. I really like these story boards as I think the level of detail is perfect or more than enough to convey the necessary information and features a bunch of extra aspects that really set the tone of the film already.

My Neighbour Totoro is the 1988 film Directed by Hayao Miyizaki and created by Studio

My Neighbour Totoro Storyboards

Ghibli. The film is very whimsical and this is shown through the loose style of the initial storyboards Miyizaki created for the film. With this storyboard I love the simplicity of the line work where the scenes are almost perfectly represented but at the same time look free and sketchy. He has used a single colour to mark the shadows and communicate the type of lighting in the scene whilst adding a little more detail and attractiveness to the storyboard, making it so the image doesn't merge together and is easy to read. In addition to this there are notes to the side of the illustration perhaps giving directions for the camera or a particular way in which he would like the scene to be animated, or even additional notes on what's going on in the scene so it's clear to the animators and other people working on the film. I really like the loose style of this storyboard as in this case it gives a really good starting tone for the rest of the film and portrays it's whimsical fantasy style very well from the beginning, being able to convey so much character with so little is something I'd really like to be able to do and Miyazaki makes it look effortless here.

5 Centimeters Per Second is another Japanese animation, this time directed by Makoto Shinkai for a 2007 release. The film itself features some of the most captivating and picturesque settings I've ever seen in an animated film, and I often go back to watch it just for the backgrounds and environments that it features. The storyboards for 5 Centimeters Per Second feature a crazy number of different camera angles that are also used in the film but are less noticeable there. Seeing the initial stills from the film in storyboard

5 Centimeters Per Second Storyboard

reminds you of the large variation in the way that this film utilises the camera, different close ups and obscure angles are used in ways to really draw you into the film as the story is being told, and make you feel you are a part of that world. In terms of how the story board is presented, it feels quite organised and structures, and the drawings are very clean but equally they feel like sketches that could be altered at any time if they needed to be. Like Miyizaki, Shinkai also combines notes with his storyboard illustrations perhaps to make the narrative depicted easier to understand and follow. The notes could also be ideas and thoughts he had whilst he was drawing and planning certain scenes. I think as a director Makoto Shinkai has really great vision for animation and film as a whole, this is clearly evident in his work.