Students Say- STORYBOARDS……..not again

Ok, a new phase is taking over. We thought the storyboarding for SHADE is done. Right? We were wrong. Not completely but still uncomfortably to some extent.

There are different ways and methods and styles and approach and intentions and necessities (ok too many ‘ands’…sorry.) for storyboarding. A storyboard (ahh… such a long word. Would it be ok if we call it Sboard?) For a film will be drawn differently than a Sboard for a 21 min animated series. Similarly there is a huge difference between the Sboard for a live action film and for an animated film. Many amateurs think that it is the same thing (as did we.)

Sboards for film are normally shot by shot representation of the scenes. They are not often too detailed. The flow and what is going to happen in the shots is illustrated but not how it happens. It is left for the direction or the actors to perform.

In animation though, Sboards are very well detailed showing all the scenes and the motion or action in the scene. The actual animation is described in each shot to clarify the story, drawing sometimes the major key frames of animation. (man! Its too detailed….) The simple reason for this is that you cannot take any risks for a reshoot in animation, while there can be hundreds of takes in a live action film. Thus the cost & the amount of work make it unaffordable. You have to be sure that your film is ready lock, stock and barrel on the paper first so that you don’t have to think over and try on the production.

So the new phase is simply that we are going to break up the shots from our Sboard and try to draw the performance in it because we had been under the impression that the Sboard we drew (which were a shot by shot progression like live action) would be enough for our short film. But with the alarm clock sounded by our teacher, woke us up to our mistake.

I think that the way you draw the Sboard should highly depend upon what is your film’s requirement. (And believe me I am perfectly right) you should carve your style yourself as you know (hopefully) what justifies your film.

We’ll get back with the breakups and some expression sheets later. See ya!

This is an excerpt of the story progression we had designed.













Id Animation & Arts