Level 3 Unit 31

Lecturer: Phil Smith

Recap Animating for the web Used CSS to do a simple style animation. File sizes and conversion.

You will have to do a short story or nursery rhyme for assignment 3 that lasts between 1 and 2 minutes (do the maths on frames).

Storyboarding an Animated Short

What is a Storyboard?

Storyboarding is the process of producing sketches of the shots of your script. The end result looks like comic book of your film (without the speech bubbles).

Storyboards are part of the preproduction (or planning) process that can include creating a logline, character development, scripting, and sound design.

Storyboard Example

Storyboards in Live Action Movies In the late 1930’s, David Selznik hired William Menzies to

storyboard “Gone With the Wind.”

The popularity of storyboarding motion pictures continued with Orson Welles, Howard Hughes, and Alfred Hitchcock.

A large majority of present day directors have their films storyboarded including Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, and the Cohen brothers.

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Benefits of Storyboarding Reduces the time spent on unfocused,

undirected discussion Allows everyone to share ideas equally and

promotes consensus Helpful in generating alternatives Cost effective, accurate planning Perceive possible continuity problems before

they happen Communication between departments Artistic and aesthetic vision remains consistent Communication with client funding the project

Benefits of Storyboarding

Stick to the storyboard!

It really will save you time in the long run.

Storyboard Paper

Storyboards used for beginning story development are often rough drawings on 4” x 6” index cards tacked to a bulletin board. Panels can be easily added and the order can be shuffled.

Once the story is established, storyboard paper with 9 to 12 panels maybe be used to thumbnail (tiny rough drawings) the board.

Final production storyboards are usually done using one, two, or three panels per page.

See Bar sheet later

Horizon Placement A hint on composition.

In geographic terms, the horizon is where the sky meets the ground. In art, the horizon is the eye level. In an exterior scene, they may or may not be the same line.

Do not let the horizon (either artistic or geographic) split the frame in half.

In most cases, lower the horizon.

Horizon Examples

Image 7. Used with permission.

We have already produced a background for an animation; do you remember where the horizon line was places?

Storyboard template Storyboards can be presented on bar sheets.

Bar sheets is a document (on the wiki) to use to create your storyboard with all of the elements needed for each picture.

Your storyboard is how you can identify key frames and where a particular animation begins and ends in each layer.

Summary Storyboards.