Category Archives: Storyboard

Production Principles: 3-Panel Story and Feedback

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My final 3-panel story was based in this location drawing I did at Tate Modern:

I chose this one because I was pleased with the proportions of the girl (you can tell it’s a child) and she reminds me of the sort of characters that featured in books I read when I was growing up.

The way she’s standing made me imagine her waiting for something, which is how I ended up drawing her standing on a train station platform. It made several drafts before I decided to submit this one, most of which came from my head rather than using references.

I was pretty pleased with the final result, given that I rarely draw entire scenes like this from my imagination as a polished piece. However, a number of issues were flagged up during feedback. People felt it was unclear that it was at a train station, and some people thought the person on the opposite platform was another version of the girl. I had tried to change the proportions to show that this was an adult, but maybe the differences are too subtle.

The tutor said that my piece isn’t really a story, more just a single moment, and commented on the fact that it is very static. Part of the reason for this is that my moving image work is often influenced by director Wes Anderson, who uses a lot of static camera work and central alignment in his composition, and hones in on small, seemingly inconsequential moments. So I think I got a bit too caught up in my own stylistic tastes and didn’t think about whether I was creating a genuine dynamic story here.

But I still like the non-moving camera angle and the simplicity of it. I can see that it’s not very exciting, but it feels authentic to me. To me, this 3-panel story is about the feeling of waiting for someone important to arrive, not being able to move until they do, and then finally seeing them. I think you can communicate big things like that in small ways, and if I were to make this into a film or animation, I would include those little details like the girl’s hands fidgeting, or the wind blowing her hair and coat.

Actually I kind of want to make that now…

So to improve this piece, I would add some colour to help distinguish the different elements, and I would make the drawings more detailed for the same reason. If I were to change the camera angles, some ideas would be to show the little girl from the side in the second one, maybe looking at her watch or down at the long length of the train tracks.

Production Principles: Final Storyboard Feedback

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Everyone enjoyed the story I had written, and seemed interested in what had happened. People seemed to think my method of using photographs instead of drawings worked well, and felt that the emotions of the characters came through despite their simplicity, due to the use of different angles and close-ups.

There was also an agreement that a bit more detail would make it even more clear. If I were to do this again, I would draw the facial expressions of the characters onto the photographs in Photoshop. I would also go with my original intention to stick pictures of the setting onto the cardboard set.

Overall, I’m really pleased with the reaction I got from this, particularly the things people found funny. Some of that was from the story itself, but people also laughed about the techniques I’d used to make it, such as the poorly-cropped images of tea and cake pasted onto the photograph of the table (a cube made of card with stripy paper glued on). I don’t mind the scruffiness or haphazard elements of my work being laughed at, because it’s generally at least partially deliberate and shows the character of my style. Because f it wasn’t deliberate at first, it probably was by the end. I was only person in the group who didn’t draw their storyboard by hand, and even though this method came from a lack of confidence in my artistic skills, people seemed to really enjoy the creativity and uniqueness of it.

Production Principles: Storyboarding, Location Drawing at Tate Modern

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Monday 30th October 2023

Today we spent the afternoon at Tate Modern doing fast location drawing of people. It had to be fast because, being in a public place, people kept moving so you didn’t have much time to capture them.

To start with, we had to just draw people’s faces. I found this really challenging at the beginning, particularly since I’m used to just doing the bare minimum to represent faces when drawing people. I ended up sitting near to an artwork that people would stand and look at for a while, which gave me a bit more time to draw them, and by the end I felt more confident with it. Here are my some of my drawings:

Then we had to draw scenes. By now I felt much more willing to quickly get something down and move on, and I was quite pleased with some of my drawings:

Production Principles: Working on Final Storyboard

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For my final storyboard, I didn’t feel confident in drawing 20-60 frames myself, so I decided to use photography instead.

After brainstorming the story, I found quite easy to write the final version with an inciting incident, climax and resolution.

I then decided to use pipecleaners to make simple puppets for my characters, and I made a set out cardboard and paper. I found it quite tricky to figure out how much detail I needed, particularly in the set. I considered printing off pictures to stick to the cardboard background, to create a backdrop, but worried this would limit the amount of angles I had available for photographing the panels.

For the panels, I photographed several angles and compositions so that I would have more than one option for putting it all together. By keeping the puppets/models simple, I could also reuse photographs to speed up the process.

I was pleased with this method of creating a storyboard because as well as reducing the amount of stress and time it would have taken to draw all the panels and compositions I wanted, it links to my main interest in stop motion. I found the process of composing close-up photographs of miniatures more challenging than I had anticipated, and I was glad to have the chance to develop that skill a bit further.

Production Principles, Storyboarding: 23rd & 25th October 2023

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Monday 23rd October

In our first storyboarding class, we discussed the purpose of a storyboard and the elements of visual literacy that form storyboard language:

We also went through the different elements that go into composing a frame, often known as ‘camera language’.

I feel like these are all things that I would notice and be effected by when watching any kind of animation or film, but often without noticing, which is suppose is the aim to an extent – that these elements add to the message and emotion of the work without being a distraction from the story.

I found during today’s class that storyboarding that things like camera angles, framing, composition, perspective etc are more part of the purpose of it than things like character or set design. I also discovered that these are not things that I find easy to communicate in drawing – at least not at the same speed as other people in the group. My attempt to draw someone knocking over a vase, with the vase falling towards the camera, was not very successful:

So when we were set our assignment in the second lesson of creating a storyboard, I felt pretty overwhelmed, but knowing I didn’t have to rely on drawing alone helped a lot. I think I might bring in things like collage or photos for my storyboard. One idea I’ve had is to make models of my characters and stage them, and then photograph them to make the compositions I want.

Later on in the class, we had to do a continuous line drawing of the whole room. I enjoyed this a lot more than the little one-panel storyboard drawing we did. I think that was because a continuous line drawing is expected to be messy and imperfect, so I relaxed more. I also know from previous studies that I enjoy working in this scruffy, unfinished style in my drawing:

Continuous line drawing of classroom

Wednesday 25th October

Today we talked about story and story structure:

We also looked closer at composition in a camera shot. We had a go at recreating shots from a film, focusing on shape and tone value:

I found I felt more confident with this as I went, although the results are still quite mixed in terms of how well you can see what is actually in the shot.