Storyboards don’t have to be pretty!
Inside Out Panel - Artist unknown
Okay, so this is a little rant, primarily directed at myself. And before I start ranting I have to clarify that all these boards were drawn by the most talented artists, these are people who can draw circles around me. This is not about the artists, or their work: it is about the nature of storyboards. (Also I really, really love the storyboard panels pictured in this post!)
I often get blown away when I see storyboard panels online, or in some of the art-of books that get published. But these examples often don’t show the full boards and, in some cases, the artists working on them also got a chance to clean them up before publication. In reality storyboards are often crude and messy. In fact they are crude and messy by nature.
A storyboard is a way to visualize a certain approach to a scene or sequence. Sometimes it might work, and make it to the movie. More often the drawing will end up 'on the ground'. Discarded because there is a better way to tell the story. It is madness to feel the desire to draw pretty pictures. And yet it is a desire I feel regularly, and it will usually get me into trouble.
What happens when I start trying to draw pretty panels is that I lose sight of the sequence. This will especially be a problem when I run into structural problems later on. Because I feel the individual panels all look pretty nice I find it really hard to see where the structural problems lie. It also makes it harder to cut panels and shots if you’re attached to the way you drew in them.
So, here are some pictures from the real-life story trenches to remind myself to stop being precious and to just do it:
(This is a repost from a previous Tumblr post.)
