New Storyboards!

These boards probably won't make sense until you see the current pass of the film with the storyboards inserted, since what you're seeing here doesn't all happen in sequence. But I wanted to show them all together, so you can get an idea of how my boarding skills have been developing.

I must admit that having a set, even though it's a temporary set, and poseable character rigs makes things a lot easier. Firmly planting yourself in space when you have no visual references to ground you can make drawing very, very difficult. Because for me, if your boards don't reflect spatial relationships at least semi-accurately, or if your drawings are too off-model, you're not getting a clear picture of what you're going to end up with, and the closer you can get to what is going to end up on the screen from the get go, the better.

Matthew Russell, my previous mentor, made me very aware of shot direction and where on screen characters should be placed to make things clear to the viewer. So this go around I feel I did a much better job at thinking ahead and thinking through that kind of stuff.

I really like story art. There's an immediacy to it that is satisfying and it is a joy to work with the pencil. Maybe all that means is that I would rather be a traditional animator than a computer animator, but right now I feel far from proficient at either. I think it's a synergistic thing though - the better I can draw emotions and strong poses, the more organic my computer animation will be. And the more I get good at manipulating the character in 3D space, the more I can think spatially and draw dimensionally. It was fun drawing these though, even though it took a while to muster up the courage to put the pencil down on the blank index cards for some reason... I felt like I was a traditional animator that only had to do one or two keys per action, just to get the core of the storytelling point. If only it were that easy...it's the rest of it that's a kick in the pants.

I wonder how close I will be able to follow these boards without drastically reworking things, as I am wont to do. We shall see, we shall see.

You will have noticed that I added two new characters. They will be Otto's co-workers. The tall skinny guy is Murdock and the round-headed fellow is Bishop. Now, I know I'm making more work for myself by adding two new characters, but a story should never be dictated by what's cheapest and easiest to do. My conscience will not allow me to sacrifice the soul of the story for the sake of economy. At least not while I am calling the shots.

And my story was begging me to raise the stakes. To create more empathy for the main character, because as it stood before, I was asking to audience to feel for someone that couldn't reach something high because he was too short, with the emotional touchpoint being, "oh, I've been unable to reach something before. This applies to me..." But the problem with that is that there isn't much of an emotional pull to such a predicament. Unless there's some kind of backstory involved that makes the current situation especially problematic to the character. But in a short film of under two minutes, you don't have time for that kind of backstory. So you have to tell it as part of the story for it to make any kind of sense. Hence the mocking, the teasing, the making fun of someone behind their back and getting caught. THAT people can relate to in a very personal way. And that is the backbone my story needed. That's the throughline that connects the sales clerk, Otto, to the customer, Ace. They both are being judged for who they are, and both unfairly, but only one is being a hypocrite about it, which is where the character arc happens.

It's nice to see the story start to fall in place a little better. It feels much more cohesive now and my new mentor, Bret Parker (a Pixar animator) really likes my ideas and additions. I think I will learn a lot from her. I have to, because this could very well be the last regular mentoring I will have from a professional animator with years and years of experience and a sharp eye.

I have a few mentoring relationships that I hope will continue on past my AnimationMentor studies, but I've got a long road ahead of me, and I'm seeing that what is going to make the biggest difference is not what kind of mentoring I have, but what kind of time and work and focus and dedication I bring to my craft on a consistent basis. That's what's going to decide whether I piddle around in the pool of mediocrity or rise above and take to the sky.