Here’s a storyboard sequence I drew
for the “Apprentice” episode from
the first season of The Mighty B!
for the “Apprentice” episode from
the first season of The Mighty B!
Since it can be a hassle to open up all these individual pages, I also made them into a sweet slideshow player that you can view full-screen. Here’s that groovy slideshow player, but…
…This dinky player isn’t big enough to see the storyboards clearly. If you click on the button in the lower right hand corner of the slideshow, it will open up a full-screen window that displays the pages nice and BIG!
(note the Play/Pause button and directional arrows at the bottom of the player…those’ll help you go thru them at your own pace)
The full-sized pages are also linked below if you want to peruse them at your leisure ^_^
In this episode, Mary-Frances (Portia’s mom) is under pressure to sell tons of her “Mary Kay” type of cosmetics. She decides to put her daughter’s scout troop to work for her so she can make her sales quota. Bessie is so into it that Mary-Frances decides to take her on as an Apprentice!
Over the course of this week I’ll be using this storyboard sequence to talk about some of the key concepts about solid storyboarding.
Since I’m not starting the“commentary” on these storyboards until next time, please post any questions you may have in the comments below -- any question on the topic of storyboarding is welcome...that will help me make the rest of this week’s posts as informative as possible.
Coming up next: Storyboarding commentary begins with:
Update! More posts in this Storyboarding Commentary series:
21 comments:
Thanks a lot for sharing Sherm ! I have a lot to learn about storyboarding and I m waiting for your coment on how you choose to storyboard those sequences, how you use a shoot instead of another and so on ...
Great stuff!
God, I miss that show.
Awesome work! How long did it take for you to board this sequence and at what pace do you find comfortable to work at, such as how many panels a day or week?
Sherm it was a distinct pleasure to work with you on B. This episode was one of the funniest. Your boards are always well-thought out, well acted, superbly staged and especially, nice drawn!
Since you wanted questions about the topic of storyboarding, I have several myself that I've always wondered about. I wanna become a really good storyboard artist (or at least a layout artist) myself. I've always noticed how many of my drawings and sketches (especially the ones I do in my Moleskines where I'm sketching from life) end up having the feel and look of those on a storyboard. I have no idea why.
1. Do you have be able to animate well yourself before being able to do storyboards? It sure sounds like knowing how the different animation principles work can sure help in the process. I've always heard about artists like Dick Bickenbach and Mike Lah who started out animating and then worked their way up to doing layouts and storyboards. I think learning to animate would be kinda hard learn on my own since everything has to be outsourced to Korea and Taiwan now. Even if I went to a school like Cal Arts or Sheridan, learning to animate still wouldn't be a picnic from what I've heard. I'm still in high school, finishing up my sophomore year, but I'm teaching myself important animation drawing principles from the Preston Blair book along the way.
2. How much time to you spend thinking about each drawing that you do in each storyboard panel and how it relates to the story you're working with? Sounds kinda tough to keep up with the deadlines for a show like SpongeBob or Mighty B.
3. Do you worry about whether you draw the characters "on-model" or not? I've heard a lot of crazy stories about artists getting in trouble just for adding their own stylistic takes on the characters they're trying to draw. This especially happened in the 80s.
I hope I gave you enough good questions to work with for your next post, Sherm. Can't wait to see what you have to say.
Ahmed: Thanks -- I will definitely be talking about the thought process behing the shot choices, etc.
Shawn: Thanks, I miss Bessie, too
Bob: This most likely took 3 days...the deadline and page quotas force you to move fast. On average a storyboard artist will draw between 10-15 pages (20-40ish panels) per day. Time management is tough, but I'll talk about it during this series of posts. Thanks!
Louie: Thanks you, sir-- means a lot coming from you! Working with you great, and (as I'll discuss this week) your pre-planning gave all of us a head start on these boards.
Roberto: Those are ALL great questions, and each one could be a blog post on its own. I will get to all of those questions as this series progresses--it may be more posts than I thought :)
Hi Sherm,
Looks great. Thanks.
I'd like to know how you show pacing in a storyboard. ie. If there's a moment of holding on a characters face how do you shoe that as opposed to a fast pan to something else?
cheers,
Matt
Thanks for taking the time to upload this Sherm! Very helpful! :)
Such a kooky, fun show, with GREAT character expressions....shame it isn't around anymore....
Can't wait till the Q&A/commentary! :)
whooaahhhhh, sherm. Thanks for the post. There's so much to learn from these. just lookin at the level of looseness, completion, negative space and line quality!! there is a ton here to extract and learn from.
awesome of your for sharing. thanks sherm.
i've been keeping this post open in the background trying to think of a good question, but it's tough to be concise!
it looks like you did these boards in pencil as opposed to in the computer? what sorts of materials do you use? any favorite pencils? what scale do you work at?
and i'd love to see your time management workflow like you mentioned in an above comment...that's my biggest problem for sure.
Wow! This is so cool!
really cool! I love this show!
B!B!B!B! Ha, awesome stuff Sherm. Still working on getting that to you my friend. Huge Thanks!
So cool. Thanks Sherm. So great to have these posted like this for us to see.
Matt: I recorded more videos today and I addresses your question in about the 4th or 5th video.
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YazzoB: Thanks! HJope you're enjoying the vids!
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Mike: Thanks for all your comments, day in day out ^_^
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Smo: These were done in Tombow pencil, but lately I use a black Eberhardt Faber office-supply marker or I go digital. Scale is on a sheet of legal size paper.
I'm not sure If I'll be able to cover workflow in this series, because I need to create a new storyboard to illustrate that. It's in my long-range plans, tho ^_^
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Oflada, Rad, MJ, Frank -- thanks a lot!
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thanks for the response! tombows are really great! i've been using them and the california republic palominos quite a bit lately. they're awesome too!
Great Stuff!!!!! I love The Mighty B. Congratulations!
Hello Sherm :) I really love your storyboarding techniques. I have worked on storyboards for some of my projects but I am still not sure which camera angle or shot suits the movement best. Though, I was everything done in my imagination, I fail to put the right spice to it. So, how do I understand the relation between the scene and the camera shots? Whether a sad scene will be close shot or a happy scene a wide shot etc. I look forward to your reply.
Hello Sherm :) I really love your storyboarding techniques. I have worked on storyboards for some of my projects but I am still not sure which camera angle or shot suits the movement best. Though, I was everything done in my imagination, I fail to put the right spice to it. So, how do I understand the relation between the scene and the camera shots? Whether a sad scene will be close shot or a happy scene a wide shot etc. I look forward to your reply.
HI Ani -- that's really a HUGE topic ...much more than I could answer in a simple blog comment. Obviously I would recommend my big Storyboard Secrets course at http://storyboardsecrets.com --but I hope you'll also find some guidance in the rest of these videos. Check out my free video "The Key to Powerful Storyboards" which tackles a lot of your questions: http://vimeo.com/42437552
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