THE SIMPSONS NEWS

I finished my board revisions early last week and was moved to doing story reel work on the Halloween episode for the rest of the week.  I even kept doing it on Monday because the revised script of the episode I was going to started on this week, was late.  I finally got to work on the new episode on Tuesday.  I really like this episode.  It’s heart warming and nice.  We should do shows like this more often.

APPS

There are some really clever artist out there that really impress me.  One of them is Steve Silver. Silver is an artist who has managed to make himself a brand.  Not only is he a great artist but he’s also an entrepreneur. He’s in no way shy of creating his own opportunities. He’s done many things in his career. Among them are, character designs for animation studios, online art teacher, iPad children’s books, he’s published multiple sketchbooks, as well as done a documentary on Mort Drucker.

His latest endeavor is an iPad/iPhone app for artists. It’s  a pose book, but not a pose book.  It’s like a traditional pose book in that it has models posing so an artist can use it as reference for their art BUT it uses the fact that it’s not a book to go well beyond what a pose book can do.  The best way to understand what this means is for Steve Silver to explain it himself:

I’m impressed.  That’s really innovative.  This is just the beginning of what artists like Steve Silver will begin coming up with in this new medium.  I wonder what will come next?

If you want to see more from this app, CLICK HERE for the official page.

ART/Storyboarding

Production has officially begun on my Illustrated Film (as opposed to what I’ve been doing which is PRE-production).  I’ve started the storyboard process.  The first day I started it, I stared at my treatment, I stared at my script, and thought,

“I sooo don’t want to do this”.  I forced myself to do it. I opened up the storyboarding program (Storyboard Pro) and stared at it.  Nothing came to me.  My mind was a blank.  I felt tired. I have a very difficult time doing creative thinking in front of a computer,

“How do I usually start a board or a comic?” I looked around, “Oh yeah, I sit down somewhere comfortable and draw scribbles on a script, sketchbook or notepad”.    I sat down on the couch we have here in our office and stared blankly at the large Post-it pad on my lap.  “Where do I begin? What’s the best opening shot?  How should I introduce the characters? Should it be an establishing shot? Should I show where the characters are and then cut close? Should I start with a close up of the characters and then reveal the environment? Why? Do I gain anything from either one that the other doesn’t give me? What’s this place suppose to look like again?” I was tired already and I hadn’t even started.  I took out my sketchbook where I’d drawn all the designs and opened to the page where I had the rough “floor plan” of the environment:

Okay, that helped a little. I decided to start with an establishing shot.  I drew it, it stunk:

I started again:

Better…done for the day.  I hoped next time it would get easier.

It didn’t.

The next time,  it felt just like the last time.  I forced myself to do it again.  Before I did though, I looked at some storyboard books I have.  Not books ON storyboards but published storyboards by some of my favorite board artist.  Namely Hayao Miyazaki and Katsuhiro Otomo.  I looked at them, just to see how they used establishing shots.  You see, I was still not sure about how I should start my boards.  My script, as written, didn’t take into account an establishing shot.  I was envisioning starting close on Rob’s stomach. That wouldn’t have worked though.  I rewrote the script.

I then went online and looked at Sahin Ersoz’s incredible storyboards.  That got me energized, so I sat down and started drawing.

I had a great time.  It was fun.  I suddenly remembered why I was doing this, because it’s fun.

I’m still working through the shots and what will go where and why, but I now have something to work off of.  I found that simply drawing the first shots the came to my head, was a good way to start.  By simply drawing shots, in no particular order, I was able to start looking at them and piece them together so that they would make a story.  I’d check my script and my treatment and then go and just draw shots.  Then I’d stare at them and try to piece them together.  I’d even change the script when I added stuff that wasn’t there.

So here’s what all the brain storming looked like by the time I was done. It was a big mess of Post-its all over the place so I tried to put them in some semblance of order:

Yeah, it’s difficult to tell what’s going on.  Like I said, it’s just brainstorming.  It’s just about throwing out as many visual ideas as I can so I get have the most to choose from. I’ll be continuing with this next week. I think the hardest part will be keeping track of all the thumbnails. It’s gonna take a while.

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