At this point the artwork is just made of sketches. Thumbnails, or layout, are basically a rough draft of your story in words and pictures. When we make a comic, we both have an input in the story and its content, but John writes the script, and Sandra works from it to produce layout or thumbnails.Įxample of a page of script for our graphic novel Louis – Red Letter DayĢ. A rare few might even “improvise” and jump straight to final artwork, drawing the story panel by panel without detailed advance planning: Chris Ware, for example has worked in this way. Some creators think visually first, rather than in words, and jump straight to thumbnails (see Tip 2), without writing a script. PS.The above is obviously not a set rule. Now, go try some of those exercises I mentioned! But maybe save that for another project– not storyboards. If you want to render something and make it look amazing, that’s great. Use the light to separate foregrounds middle-grounds, and backgrounds. Most of the time, you could get away with having three to four main values. You don’t need to triple-light a scene or get a complete value range. It can be just as critical to a story, for many reasons. What does that leave? For me, I’d argue lighting, or value. So, we’ve got characters and backgrounds simplified. Do the bare minimum to define your space– see how little detail and clues you need to get that space across to the viewer.ĭo that and you’ve “ eliminated the superfluous” in your backgrounds. With this in mind, get to work on dressing your scene. Pick a place and then create a list of elements that define that place. Look at that page of Zorro art by Toth– there are maybe four or five total background elements on the entire page, but you never feel lost as to where we are in the story.Īs an exercise, try to create a space that is well-grounded and as simple as possible. You should figure out what’s important to tell the story and include that. What do we need to tell this story? Is that fancy vase in the back of the living room important? Does it help to establish the character’s wealth? Is it an ancient family heirloom? Does it get smashed on a burglar’s head? If the answer to all of these is no and it lacks any other important plot point, maybe you shouldn’t worry about rendering it like a master still-life painter! Just like your character, boil your scene down to it’s essence, or most important aspects. Having that establishing shot be a little more rendered helps keep the rest of the scene fairly simple. It helps establish the world we’re telling our story in and invites the viewer in. These shots are usually a bit more rendered out than the rest of the backgrounds in the scene. We usually have an establishing shot at the beginning that defines the setting. Once you’ve done that, you can really crank out some boards with a wide range of emotions and poses.ĭo that, and you’ve “ eliminated the superfluous” in your characters. Really break the character down and get used to them. Try to do a quick study of the character, filling a page with the same character over and over. Work on a clear, unique silhouette of the character. Make as few drawing lines as possible while making them recognizable. Just like the first pass at a script, take your character designs and boil them down to their essence. “Treat your storyboards like traffic signs– meant to be read in the blink of an eye.” CLICK TO TWEET Treat your storyboards more like traffic signs– meant to be read in the blink of an eye. You may want to draw the heck out of a certain background object that looks cool, but ask yourself if it’s important to the story. Do you know what you need to get your point across? We have a very specific goal in mind to lead the viewers. So, taking what I’ve learned from Toth and applying it to our lesson: It has a strong silhouette that’s simple to draw quickly, with clear signs of the actual physical composition of the character. This is arguably as simple as you can make a character, but the design still withstands the test of time. Looking at examples of Toth’s art, he has large simple shapes that do triple duty of defining edges, creating interesting shapes, and leading the viewer.Įven his design sheets were laid out like a full-blown illustration! Igoo, from Hanna-Barbera’s The Herculoids, is a perfect example of Toth’s genius. That’s great, if you want to work once a year, but real people need to get paid! Back in Toth’s day, they cranked out comic-book pages that weren’t as detailed as today’s art, but were nonetheless powerful, imaginative and clear. Some people would argue that you need to be more detailed or have more world elements in a story to be a successful storyteller. Many of his other “rules” follow the same line of simplification. It’s a beautiful, simple statement– just like his work. “Eliminate the superfluous” CLICK TO TWEET
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