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.

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.

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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