Drink responsibly

A few boards from the opening shots of a recent project for a well known drinks manufacturer. The director I was working with wanted lots of close-ups of a cocktail being made; ice tumbling into a glass, alcohol being poured etc... lots of drink-porn type shots. Good fun to do, though as usual, I had loads to produce and very little time to.

(Slightly) Gory Boards.

More storyboards...... 

Today has been a fun day.

This storyboarding job is pretty epic. I've had to blast through around 100 storyboards over the last week and as a consequence I've had to really speed up production. Not all of them are as polished as these few. I've just finished another section today, and as I knew I was coming to the end I was in the mood to have a pleasant day drawing. I really enjoyed doing these ones, a little gory perhaps, but fun to draw.

Do I need to explain what's going on? The chap in the foreground has been run over - the chap in the background is cleaning brains off the bonnet.

On to the final section tomorrow.

"The Dark Road" Storyboarding.

So, I've been asked about how I've been putting these storyboards together so rather than posting excerpts and arbitrary boards as I have been doing recently, I thought I'd do a more comprehensive blog post about how I go about it.

I've been working on preproduction for a Noir feature film: gangsters and hit men, car chases and robberies – all that good stuff. So from start to finish:

Script/shotlist. This is what I receive from my client. Sometimes it's a brief description, for example “Shot 30: MCU on Jared, front on, waiting coolly in the driver’s seat. (Camera is peering in through front windscreen)” Sometimes it's a lot more precise, sometimes I'll get a reference photo or a thumbnail included with a quick doodle from the production team when they're wanting something specific.

Next, backgrounds. In most cases I make the backgrounds in 3D. I can get more detailed backgrounds in there and surprisingly it also works out quicker, if there are multiple shots in the same location I can just move the camera around a little bit and tweak the lighting. It's also useful to get the exact shot I'm looking for and gives me a lot more control over the scene. It's essentially a mini set for me to play around with. Also over the course of jobs that I've finished, I've built up an archive of models; items and locations that I can place in the scene. Of course some items still need to be made... such as this moose head from a bar scene in “The Dark Road.” I don't know if I'll ever need to make a moose head again. If I do, well, I've got one now.

Then I simply draw the characters directly into the computer, a few tweaks to the tones and mood lighting for the final polish and it's done.

Why do I use 3D for the backgrounds? Well, I'm working towards combining my animation work and the storyboarding work into animatics next year. I saw this superb work and realised that I'm doing something very similar with my work. If you saw the "Noir" animation I released earlier this year, it's pretty much the same idea; hand-drawn characters over 3D backgrounds.

Finally, here's a quick demo of another shot:

68. TWO SHOT, Jared and Sam in Ryan’s mansion. They have turned the place upside down (piles of smashed junk everywhere), books pulled out of a bookcase (RHS frame). At the back of the shot a large, tall window, with one pane has been smashed (their entry route). To the left Jared (facing away from camera) is searching through items (chucking stuff behind him). Sam is in MCU, LHS frame. He is holding a book, looking at it. The book’s title is ‘The Suicide Club."

I accidentally myself.

Cowboy.

More storyboards. A full panel this time. It's a cowboy.

Some characters...

So I've had to do some quick conversational storyboards for this job, over-the-shoulder shots of characters chatting. Here's three of the main characters in one image..

I'm pleased with the bald geezer in the middle.

More storyboard (excerpts)

"Julia is looking out of Ryan’s window to car park below."

As you can see. 

New Avatar?

Tempted to use this as a new avatar...

Perhaps not. "Ryan opening flat door to a greasy / sleezy looking landlord" as it says in the script.

3D backgrounds, hand-drawn characters.

So I'm using a lot of 3D in my work these days. Being able to quickly knock together a set or backgrounds means that I can move cameras around, light the scenes and squeeze a lot of detail in my boards. I've got a steadily growing model archive of props and scenery that I've created for various projects - and anything I don't have, depending on the complexity, doesn't take all that long to build.

It comes in especially handy if there's more than one shot that needs to be drawn for a scene, I can move the camera, render another background off and then get the characters drawn in over the top as shown here.

Moose

 

More storyboarding. This time, a detail from a scene in a bar. Look carefully and there's a moosehead on the wall in the background. 

Stripe up.

Board 62. Slashed with a blade. 

Something nasty is happening in this car. Close-up from the Storyboarding job I'm working on at the moment. Spent far too long doing this one, but enjoyed it and treated it as a warm-up for the remainder of these boards.

I expect I'll post a few more as the job goes on, there's tons of them to do.