Advanced Storyboarding For TV

Overview

Instructor: Jake Hollander Date: Oct. 21 & 22, 2023

Basics

Speed

• Develop the fastest brain to drawing relationship.
• Move past the blank page.

Keyboard shortcuts

• Suggests putting hot keys in one area, e.g. under left hand, A, S, D, F, Z, X, C, V, etc.
• Use select tool to remove lines in Storyboard Pro (SBP)
• Create hot key for Delete (I guess in that left hand area of the keyboard as opposed to the DELETE key at the upper right of the keyboard.)
• Also separate dedicated hot keys for delete layer and delete panel.

List of essential hot key functions

• Select
• Delete
• Undo
• Duplicate panel
  • Best for acting
• Select by color
  • Fills
  • Adjusting BGs and characters
• Copy & Paste Layers
• Copy & Paste Scenes
• Shift + Command (⇧ + ⌘ ) to select layers across panels
• Auto-fill (in the same layer)

Fills

• Dedicate a hot key for draw behind. (Draw behind is an alternate method to auto matte.)
• Select by color is your friend.
  • Suggests putting fill on the same layer as line art & use select by color to edit line vs fill.
• Delete portions of lines using eraser to break the line, and select to
  • Recommends NOT using the cutter tool.

Organizing layers

• Use copy & paste/duplicate as much as possible.
• ⇧ + ⌘ to select across panels as long as the layers all have the same name (e.g. "A")
• "BG" layer for horizon line and rough perspective lines
• Then use "A" layer for BG art, plus extra layers if there is foreground, middle ground, and/or far background planes.
• Use gray lines for BG art to set off characters.
• Only fill BG layers for elements in extreme FG planes.

Onion skinning and light box

Look into the light box feature (light bulb icon) as an alternate to onion skinning.

Light box will dim all layers in a panel other than the currently selected layer.

Clarity and speed

Clarity and speed are the two most important storyboarding skills.

The silhouette provides the most basic read on a character's body.

Proportions

Follow basic relationships in the proportions of bodies for proportion retention which important for acting.

Whole body

• Elbows line up with the bottom of the ribcage.
• Wrists line up with the bottom of the pelvis.
• The tips of the fingers line up with the middle of the thigh.

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Head

• All the features of the face fall below the horizontal line that divides the head. The eyes can be placed on that line with the eyebrows slightly above.
• The top of the ear touches that horizontal middle line.
• In profile, the back of the jaw line hits the bottom of the ear.
• In profile, the neck extends at a diagonal from the back of the skull.
• In profile, the back of the neck touches the head right behind the bottom of the ear.

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Torso

There is a triangle under the neck from shoulder to shoulder that defines the clavicles.

• You can think of the torso as a sack of flour that bends in the middle, which is useful for applying perspective to the body.
• The neck attaches in the center of the top plane of this sack.
• The arms attach at the top corners of the sack.
• The legs attach on the bottom edge at the two corners.

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• S-curve between shoulders and pelvis.
  • The important thing to think of when posing a torso is that there are horizontal lines through the shoulders, waist, and hips. Theses lines need to be put in perspective, and they don't necessarily all point in the same direction.
  • He just tossed this out there. Looking it up afterwards, it seems like a cheat for fashion drawings as the structure for elegant poses. The lower part of the "S" extends beyond the hips and into the legs, so it's really not that useful to keep in mind for orienting torsos when you're thinking of the direction of the horizontal lines through shoulders, waist, and hips in perspective.

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Acting

Body language

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Sample rough figure drawing. No clothing. Only the structure of the pose and positions of features on the face.

• Hierarchy in terms of information conveyed: Face > Posture > Hands
• It doesn't matter what anyone is wearing. The important thing is gesture (AKA posture, silhouette, poses).
• Parts of the body lead emotion.
• Body language.
  • Study body language in films for its acting (as opposed to studying composition, which is usually the first consideration when breaking down a scene in a film.)

Leading the audience's attention

• Eye shifts will lead cuts. Eyes will shift toward the action after the upcoming cut.

Perspective and proper footing

• Make sure the body is posed so it's balanced over its center of gravity.
• Apply all concepts in the Proportions section to rough drawings (thumbnails).
• You will always make bad drawings.

Working through mistakes

• • Instead of despairing of the quality of a drawing, stop and identify what isn't working.
  • Adjust what isn't working.
  • Part of being a professional is being able to identify what works and what doesn't work.
  • Faced with an unsatisfying pose, stop and consciously think about what is your intention with the pose. Then think what to add or change to reach that intention.

Expression in rough drawings

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Sample rough drawing of a head showing basic expression without any excess detail.

• Do thumbnails/roughs as quickly as possible.
  • Make them ROUGH ROUGH ROUGH.
  • Remove any unnecessary detail. Extra detail is BAD.
• Cleaned up rough drawings get in the way of conveying acting. Remove all details that can be removed.
• He uses the selection tool to adjust copies of artwork in subsequent panels which retains proportions easily and quickly.
• He hardly uses onion skin at all when adjusting the new poses.

Feel

• Relies on composition.
• Combining figure an form into the feel of the scene.
• How does the character interact with its environment?
• What does the composition tell us and the framing convey?

Framing

• How does the composition partner with the gesture and actions the character takes? E.g. how would a character who is uncomfortable interact with the scene as opposed to a character who is confident.
• Shot language and its impact, e.g. close vs. medium vs. wide shots.
• Foreground elements (i.e. between the character and the camera) can trap the audience' eye and force the viewers to look at specific points in the frame.
• Contrasting light and dark areas also directs the audience's attention.
  • Framed Ink Recommended book about light and dark in composition.

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• Think about overlapping BG element with characters. Avoid clashing information in these overlaps.

Rule of thirds

"Rule of thirds" 3x3 grid.

• Helps define shot flow
• The four intersections within the 3x3 grid are the most important real estate within the frame. Attention naturally goes to these areas first.
• Place characters and the subjects of their attention (i.e. anything they are looking at) on these four points.

Character interaction with the composition

• Are they relaxed? Tense? Etc.
• Are they expecting something.
• If a character wants something in the environment, a subliminal way to convey this is to have the character's hands stretch out in the direction of that thing even before the audience is allowed to see it.

Screen direction

• Maintain screen direction.
  • Action should continue in one direction until there is a reason for it to travel in the opposing direction.
  • Don't interrupt an action with movement flowing counter to it. This includes action across cuts.