DragonHearts Storyboard

3rd version of my storyboard assignment of redoing a scene from 'Dragonheart'. Biggest lessons I got out of this is learning when are good moments to cut, get a point of view, close ups or not for emphasis and other things. Oh and need to learn to draw more animals. 

Dragon Riders and Ironclad

This week's assignment was making an 8 panel sequence after this image:

Dunno who made this- our teacher found it online and loved its  cinematic shot

 The original setup I had was that a mysterious something comes in and attacks the creature and which later reveals to be the dragon riders.

some unused panels

Mark fixed things up quick by simply rearranging the sequence so it reads a lot clearer.

And story impact wise, it is much much better.

We also had our discussion about the movie IRONCLAD- a medieval type backdrop for another 'Seven Samurai'-esque story. The biggest flaws to that was that while it was entertaining and all that, a lot of character goals and motivations were either very shallow (there's something there but it's all superficial) or you get situations like below. A lot of scenes could have also benefitted from a visual cue rather than a simple dialogue exposition.

  

Struggle

This week was doing an 8 panel sequence depicting 'Struggle'-could mean inner or outer struggle, in my case I opted for outer struggle in the cliffhanger sense.

Critiques for the sequence boiled down to 'Do Not crop the important bits of the shot'. This was applicable to panel 2 with the dude hanging on for dear life, and also with my panel 6- where I completely lost the hanging dude as I was trying to emphasize the other one pulling him up. The positive thing I got from my entry was that from the first panel- the hands holding on to each other,was a nice opening shot and an attention grabber.

13 Assassins and Bus Stop Beats

THe Horseman, BusStops and Economy of Icons

So this week we watched the 2009 australian film, The Horseman. It's a pretty raw and gorey movie about a father in a revenge rampage against men who had a hand in the death of his daughter. Andrews says it's quite a powerful movie in that as an audience we totally understand what motivates and drives this man, yet the sheer violence he dishes and receives leaves us conflicted on how deep is this man going before he's in over his head. He ain't superman and he ain't a super ex-spy like Liam Neeson was in Taken.

Assignment wise we had to do 5 different ways of drawing a dude waiting for a bus at a bus stop.
I thank the lucky stars a friend and classmate tipped me off that the key to this assignment was that one had to see a road, a person waiting and a bus stop.

The red notes basically indicate why the shot doesn't really read as 'waiting for bus' and could be

interpreted as something else entirely.

 So when story boarding, one doesn't give a lot of care on making really well rendered settings or scenes. This is storyboarding, not scene building. If we're going to be doing 300+ shots, we need to be as efficient and economic with what we draw to get a point across. The bottom half is basically a note that visually intense shots are best made when a visual pattern was established first before breaking it.




And finally, Mark's comment about Storyboarding to answer a classmate's question about the difficulty of the subject.

Floating Lady

So our assignment for Visual Storytelling was to make 4 panels after this image:

After a bunch of doodling, I came up with this sequence (read left to right):

8.5x11 folded twice, done with pencil hence smudgapalooza.

 The critiques I mostly got with this sequence was:
-Panel 2 had 2 things happening- the primary point I wanted was someone getting out as the second dude was making a call. The solution was to push back the secondary one and try to show the first more clearly.
-Panel 3 and 4 were redundant, in that both were showing the man about to take his glove off. Every panel should be bringing in new information and insight. So panel 3 ought to be indicating his approach to the body, and panel 4 reveals what's underneath the glove he's taking off. Also the depiction of taking the glove off was not clear and the focus (oooh shiny hand) in panel 4 was too low and ought to be in the center of the frame.

Storyboards Mark also critiqued on, my stuff are in the lower right. 

Digital do over, applying the critiques. 

The Adventures of Captain Conroy, Storyboard 101 and Breaking Away

So last week Mark Andrews narrated to us this sci-fi space adventure he and a friend of his was working on, and our assignment was to illustrate one scene that struck with us.

Since this was a week ago and I barely remembered most of the details, I decided to go with the beginning, when the Captain and his motley assortment of aliens were held at gunpoint by spider-men with big guns and he was coolly relaying all his achievements in his nigh-immortal lifetime.



This being my first critique encounter with Mark Andrews, the only thing that held me back from crying like a little baby (from being the second person critiqued on and the class laughing at the work) was the fact he pretty much treated everyone the same way.

That and he drew out all these awesome alternative shots. A lot of which, as someone who drew comics and knows the importance of composition, makes me wonder 'Why didn't I think of this?'

What's the point of the moment, and how best to relay that point in the simplest and clearest way possible. My shot was a mess in that the lighting and tones were everywhere and nothing really popped. Conroy looks more angry than cool in the face of weapons (which you can baaaaarely see in upper left corner).

I also jotted some thoughts on the movie of the week, Breaking Away. The movie bored me to tears about this small town kid who wanted to be an Italian bike racer. It felt shoddy being one of two people who didn't like the movie and having to articulate my why's and being told I was thinking 'Dated'- taking the movie expectations of today with it's fast pacing to back to the 1970s.

I still didn't like it- maybe cause I couldn't relate or felt little empathy for the main dude. I just saw Mr. Smith goes to Washington last Saturday with friends and that's an older film and also slow movie but I felt more for the character there than Breaking Away.