Thursday, June 14, 2007

A NOTE ABOUT STORYBOARDS

That's me (above) pitching a board at Disney's. I think the guy giving the black power salute is Bob Taylor. I can't see very well but I think the drawing I'm pointing to is a black and white doodle of Donald that I later re-did in crayon (reprise below). I love working in crayon but hardly ever get the chance. One of these days I'll do a post about how great crayons are, even the Crayolas you get in the supermarket. But I digress.


What I really want to talk about is how much influence a storyboarder should have on a film.

I'm a storyboarder myself and I like it because in some ways it's close to direction and I like to direct. In a small and limited way storyboarders are the visual kings of the projects they work on and like every other storyboarder I like to be king.

Hearing me talk like this would have amazed animators in the 30s and 40s. In the golden age of Warners, when cartoons were done right, storyboards weren't a big deal. Boards were done by writer artists and were so rough and so lacking in continuity that a casual reader would have had trouble understanding them (example below). That's why so few Warner boards of that era survived. Nobody thought they had any value. Really, the story only came together visually in the mind of the director who did a bunch of drawings for his handouts.


Later on, in the TV era, writers and executives effectively got rid of directors and a new category of artist was born, the non-writer storyboarder. This was a terrible defeat for animation.

The problem is that films with a strong script and storyboard feel often don't lend themselves to animation very well. If you look at the funniest Bill Nolan black & white Terrytoons you'll see that the highlights, the real audience-grabbing scenes, are often something the animator (or the animator-director) thought of. Cartoons lost a lot of their playfulness and innovation when animators were reduced to fleshing out other peoples' ideas and layouts.



Of course audiences like structure and and so do I. In the current factory system some of the storyboard feel is inevitable. Even so, without the animators' input into the stories cartoons will continue to be a sad thing, very much cut off from its roots. We need to bring animators and directors back under the roof of the parent studio. We storyboarders should remind ourselves that the animators are the stars (or should be) and we're just there to make them look good. Everybody else, the executives, directors, writers, storyboarders, layout people and colorists...all exist solely to make the animator actor look good on the screen.


BTW, this post was inspired by Mark Mayerson's almost current blog about storyboards:

http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com/


The storyboard at the bottom is from Ward Kimball's "Mars and Beyond." I don't know if it helps to make my point, I just put it in because I like it.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

good post here friend, doesn't this seem like the antithesis (or shot in the arm I should say) to all those hack job 90s warner tv cartoons that had the script writers ruling with an iron fist? (You should know best because I believe you worked on Tiny Toons if I am not mistaken.)

Anonymous said...

I want to hear about the crayons you big tease!

Max Ward said...

Thanks for an insightful post! Did this Disney cartoon ever get made? I actually have had that crayon picture of Donald saved on my computer for a long time. It's hilarious!

JohnK said...

I love that Donald drawing, Eddie.

Patrick McMicheal said...

Eddie, I took the liberty of Enhancing your storyboard photo for a better look!
Enhanced_Photo

Anonymous said...

Nice drawing. But wasn't this a pitch for the Mickey, Donald and Goofy video of 3 Musketeers? It looks like Donovan Cook and Chris Otsuki are watching the pitch.
How does the gag drawing of Donald in modern clothes holding a purse with fake legs fit in with the film?

Chris Merritt said...

Gorgeous Donald sketch Eddie! What short was this for? Did it ever get produced?

Kali Fontecchio said...

I love that Donald drawing Eddie!!!!!!!! Great photo too! You're such a happy teacher!!!

Anonymous said...

"Cartoons lost a lot of their playfulness and innovation when animators were reduced to fleshing out other peoples' ideas and layouts."

But wasn't that exactly what Chuck Jones and his stroryboarders and layout guys did? Used the animator to perform or flesh out their work?
The animators on Jones' cartoons worked literally pose to pose to Chuck's exact character layouts-he was very fussy about it, so I hear. And they also had to follow Mike Maltese's gags as approved by Chuck. The animator animated so he brought his particular skill to the scene, but Chuck and the other directors very tightly controlled exactly what the animators did. Every frame.
Even Clampett's animators didn't get to just do whatever they wanted for however many feet as in a Terrytoon from the 1920s.
The animation isn't there for it's own sake as a showcase for just one animator(the exceptions to this can be counted on the fingers of one or two hands), and the animator isn't necessarily funny all by himself. Same goes for the BG layout or the voices. It has to happen under the director's direction-the gagman's ideas, the director's designs, Mel Blanc's vocals.
While it isn't like TV shows today those 7 minutes were maybe even more tightly managed. I'm sure you would have rather been a story man or a director back then than an animator if you wanted control of what was on the screen.

Ryan G. said...

Crayons are ok but they are so waxy that they dont blend well. Prismacolor color pencils are my fav.

Yeldarb86 said...

When did you work at Disney?

I rarely use crayons anymore (don't ask why), but I did make this awhile ago, http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/51275531/ , with a mix of pastels and markers.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Chris, Anon: The sequence that would have had Donald in disguise wasn't used. It was just a pitch.

Tash: Directors who were animators like Bob and Chuck were much more likely than today's directors to make cartoons that were animation intensive, and that were fun for animators to work on.

This is especially true of Clampett. Look at "Kitty Kornered." It's a very, very simple story which is loaded with opportunities for tour-de-force animation.

The whole part with Porky on the doorstep probably wasn't really necessary for the story. He'd just made the same point moments before when he was sitting in the snow. It was just an excuse for a really cool Scribner scene.

Benjamin De Schrijver said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
J. J. Hunsecker said...

I don't have much to add, I just wanted to concur about that Donald drawing, which I think looks great!

Will Finn said...

that sir, is one great donald duck drawing. and a fine post.

Thad said...

Eddie- What on earth was that Donald and Pete drawing for? That has a lot of life in it considering Disney has just been producing [mostly] swill for about thirty years.

Thad said...

Should have been clearer - The drawing has a lot of life, and it's a shame none of it made it to a final product.

Jesse Oliver said...

Hi Eddie!

I just added two storyboards of mine to my pics on my website!

Go check'em out at www.myspace.com/jesseoliver1 and go to my pics!.

Don't forget to tell me what ya think of them!

Thank you'

Jesse

Sean Worsham said...

Wow, you worked at Disney Eddie? Awesome! You sure were all over the map!

I would like to see what John would do at Disney!

William said...

The Alan Greenspan of the Hand Economy strikes again! I think an Eddie autobiography is in order.

I for one would not like to see what John would do if working for Disney...though oddly the movies would probably end up probably more moral as a result.

ryan hughes said...

you know eddie youre right , in a way, because the artists should be the only ones in charge of a story! when i come up with an outline its a mini comic! i dont use a script! and no crude stuff either! you should run a network because you are a true visionary