Onward to assignment 2 for the 2022 Storyboard Mentorship with StoryboardArt.org
This time we were tasked with coming up with a scene. We had to work with the premise of a guy coming home to a surprise birthday party.
Ok. Here’s mine. The guy is pulling up in his driveway. He gets some lame birthday texts and he’s feeling a little ho-hum. His wife greets him at the front of the house, she’s really excited and wants to take a birthday selfie out of tradition. He’s not particularly enthused but when she whips out the selfie stick and is about to take a big wide photo he’s full of glee when he realizes his friends are joining in the background for a big group-selfie birthday surprise! Hooray! Could also be a phone commercial right?!
Below I put up some rough work that shows my path to generate and “find” the idea. After reading the assignment I let the idea stew for a few days, nothing was jumping out of the blue so I had to sit down and work it out on the notebook pad. This means I sat in a chair for about an hour (maybe, I lose track of time) and just tried to write out a list of ideas or how this birthday surprise could happen. Just short one-liner ideas… You can also tell when I start going off track a bit…. hence the line about “but your art is so fucking ugly.” Something about it made me laugh and compelled me to write it down. Drifting is part of the process, you just nudge yourself back on track… I eventually come around to the idea of a big group-selfie surprise and that gave me a little joy and light inside. I could see it. There was something fresh and clever about it, so I decided this was it! Pen down, focus on that, let’s do it. I liked the visual appeal of people appearing in the selfie. And I could picture the character’s face light up in joy because of that. So that became the one.
Also part of the assignment was to draw a top-down diagram of the path they would be on during the scene. Although rudimentary it was very helpful in envisioning how the storyboard would pan out. So I plotted out the driveway, the entrance to the home, the walk through the house out the back patio doors, and then into the backyard. I also placed a dog in the backyard, to create a bit of secondary action hint that something was hiding behind the shed.
Before even getting feedback from the mentors in the program, here are things I already know I need to work on.
Drawing, duh.
Adding more actions and beats within the scenes. I get a little lazy (and also because of the current state my drawing chops {another lazy excuse}) it makes me lose momentum or creates mental hurdles.
Perspective and figures…. working on that.
Putting more polish time into the pieces. Sometimes the thumbnails need another coat of paint… another pass.
Software… Start working on learning Storyboard pro so I can start dropping these into a timeline sequence and narrating the story over top. (I know this is where the fun for me will begin and where I know I’ll start having some serious storytelling sorcery powers, but I need to put the time in and learn the fundamentals…. even if that means drawings a bunch of skeleton mannequins and wrapping my head around where to put vanishing points. All very important stuff. I gotta walk before I run. but I’m excited. VO and all that other stuff will be a blast)
My funny ego… Do I have to make everything funny? No, the answer is no. I can just tell a simple fun story… that’s wonderful for right now. Because funny has always felt like my innate talent and become a source of self-identity, I sometimes feel the need to force that personal stamp. It’s ok to just do something sweet.
Lastly, doing something you suck at takes guts, and for that, I need to sit back and look and these cat scratch drawings and say hey, you’re doing fine. Stay on the path. Keep practicing the above.