Thursday, February 2, 2023

Learning Storyboarding Through Film Study - Part 2

I'm now going to show you my most recent film workout where I storyboarded a scene from Black Panther (Director: Ryan Coogler). As mentioned in my previous post, the idea is to find the script of a movie I've seen before but it's been so long that I don't remember how the scenes were blocked out. Then, board out a scene the best I could working from the script only. Afterwords, I would study how it was done in the movie, and learn from it. Here's my version thumbnailed out: 






















 

Stay tuned. Once I study the movie version, I'll upload my notes here.

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Learning Storyboarding Through Film Study - Part 1

One of the ways that's helped me the most when it comes to learning how to storyboard a scene is through the following exercise. The idea for this came to mind through my figure drawing training, which is to draw from imagination first and then study from life. By drawing from your head first, we put down what we know so far, and we get tested on what we don't know. Then, when we study from life, it immediately "clicks" what you did wrong or what was just a bit off.

In the same way, I developed an exercise for myself where I would think of a movie I've seen before, but it's been so long that I don't remember exactly how each scene was depicted. I would then find the script of that movie, pick a scene I want to board, and board it out myself. Then, after I feel I did my best job, I would watch that scene from the movie and study how the directors did it. This has helped me learn quite a lot, especially when it comes to conveying an idea or emotion to the audience so effectively.

Below is an example of one of these workouts. I did this back on June 28, 2021. I picked this one because my notes are usually illegible, but this one is cleaner. I boarded a scene from Avengers 1 (director: Joss Whedon) where Loki meets with his "managers" for an update on the world takeover plan. Here's mine:






 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, here's how the movie was blocked out: 














 

 

 

 

From here, I would analyze the movie version in different ways, starting with how the emotion of the scene was portrayed: 















 

 

 

Next, composition: 
















 

Perspective: 

















Finally, Focal Point, which was something I was curious about back then: 



 














 

 

There are, of course, plenty of different aspects of film that can be studied this way. For each one of these topics above, I would go back to my version and see what opportunities I missed and how I need to think about my scenes next time. 

Thanks for reading!

Thursday, June 2, 2022

"Jackery" Commercial - Storyboard

A storyboard created for the “Jackery Day 2022” commercial with ECR Productions. The Jackery is a portable battery and generator designed to let you explore, travel, and live life on your own terms.









Sneak Peak - Macaw Packaging Illustration

A closeup of a new packaging illustration I painted. I’ll post the full once it’s released.


 

Wednesday, May 4, 2022

“MAD” Storyboard & Animatic - Part 1


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Watch the full animatic HERE.

This is a storyboard animatic that I was working on in early fall of 2021, when I was first learning about storyboarding itself. I wanted to practice what I had learned so far but I was having a hard time coming up with my own story. I’m not a writer. I then realized I should just ask my friend Kelly Hopson, who’s already a great writer. Maybe she has some short stories lying around that I could practice turning into a cinematic. She then gives me this hilarious story about a girl who now has a “friend” she wishes she never met.


This is only part 1 and I’ve been wanting to go back and complete the rest of the story before I shared it publicly. But since today is Kelly’s birthday I felt it’s about time I put this out there, at least to celebrate Kelly’s amazing storytelling skills and also her fantastic voice acting. It was so much fun collaborating with her and I hope to work on part 2 later this year. The story just gets crazier from here.

Happy Birthday Kelly! And thanks for working with me on this!



Monday, September 28, 2020

Under-Drawings for 'Tony Jenzano: Astronaut Trainer' book

Tony Jenzano (1919-1997) was considered a mechanical genius. He was one of the few people on Earth who could put together and run the Zeiss projector. The Zeiss Mark II is sort of a hidden character in this book. It appears in multiple illustrations, and without it or Tony, this story may have never happened.  The following are some of the under-drawings that were done before painting the colors.