I just unearthed some of my old doodles and photos from a box in the garage. Some of these pictures are admittedly terrible and were never meant to be seen by anyone, but...what the heck...it's OK to blog about trivial things sometimes, isn't it?
The cat here (above) is even bigger than the dog, which is a mistake, but then again...this isn't a storyboard...it's just a visual way of writing a script. Oops! I spotted a misspelling but hopefully you won't see it.
Here's a REALLY quick doodle from some other cartoon. The dog and the human walking him are going in different directions because I changed my idea in midstream and didn't bother to redraw.
I saved this because it made me realize that there's something surreal about walking in a world where everybody else is walking at the same time. Anyway,
nothing ever came of this because it would have required too much animation.
I don't know why this would interest anyone except my mother, but here's (above) a photo of me at work at Filmation way back in 1980.
Above, the same timid dog we saw in doodle form, a little later in the cartoon. Even squirrels push him around. Once again, this is a fragment of a visual script rather than a storyboard.
I love writing prose but scripts work best when they're drawn out rather than written. There is one drawback to that technique, though. You can unconsciously lose your feel for structure when the story's drawn. That's why it's useful for an artist to outline a story first with words, if only in bullet points.
5 comments:
2 timid. Awesome funny cute drawings!! Nice pic to
Awesome drawings! Was the timid dog story a personal project of yours? I recently read Kurtzman's "My Life as a Cartoonist" and he talks about his writing/planning process, and it is similar to how you describe. Simple bullet point outline, then roughs, then various levels of finish. Seems pretty tried and true!
NodnarB: That was a kids book, wasn't it? If so, I read it and liked it, but I can't remember much of it. It needed more anecdotes.
Maira: Thanks! Sorry your comment got clipped!
Anon: Holy Cow! You've put a lot of thought into this! I'm afraid I have too many personal projects going on to consider another. Good luck with it!
Yeah it was for kids. It's really light, but I like that it's Kurtzman writing about himself. He tells a funny story about how when He would walk around with Will Elder, and a Taxi Cab got in the way, Elder would open the door and walk right through the cab instead of going around!
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