Transcripts
1. What is Storyboarding? : Hi everyone, my name is Leo Matsuda. I'll be teaching you introduction for storyboarding. Thank you so much for joining my class, and I hope my tools are useful for your future if you would like to be in this area, storyboard artist, or if you would like to make movies and things like that. So, to begin with, I would like to share what it is, storyboarding. So, storyboarding, it's a method where you can pre-visualize a project before it happens, so it's like you're pre-visioning something to avoid errors or potential problems before they could occur. So, film directors, they love this process because it's very economical and it's really efficient too in terms of time. Because you could visualize the sequence and scenes before they actually happen and that could save a lot of time, instead of having to go to the settings or for shootings, spending all this money with renting all this equipment and things like that. Disney introduced this technique in the '30s, and so he was one of the pioneers, and he was largely using it in his animated films. This technique is still being used these days for major studios, for all over the animation world and film. There's so many directors that use this technique. For instance, Alfred Hitchcock, who most of you may know, one of the greatest directors of all time, he was an avid user of storyboarding. He had absolute control over his films, why? Because of his storyboarding approach. When he came to the settings of the films were completely executed like so. He barely had to look through the camera. That shows how effective this technique can be. So, in this class, I'm going to be sharing my thoughts on storyboarding and my approach, and I'm not saying that's the only way to do it, there's a million ways. So many amazing other artists that could share a different way of approaching it. I'm going to share the way I approach, and to do that, we're going to work on this assignment where I will storyboard a story of my life. So, everyone had something happening to them, everyone have stories to tell, everyone since you're born, you went through situations. So, you probably have an archive of ideas that you could be using to execute this project. To work on this assignment, you can either use Photoshop and Adobe Bridge, that's mostly the softwares I'm going to be using, but if you don't have any of these softwares, you're more than welcome to do it manually. You can use, for example, this pad here, it's 5.5 x 10 and this is the format that we're going to be storyboarding. I'm going to be doing the digitally, but you can use this format here, it's really easy to make it. So, you can just 5.5 x 10. It would be nice if there was some kind of translucence, so you could see drawings underneath. Sharpie is really good, because they're really bold, so if you have something to draw, like for example if you draw like this, lady here, you see how you can draw really fast and you don't need to really get caught up in details, it's mostly like a very bold and clean line. So, you're mostly focusing on conveying an idea. It's not like on details. So then, you could go and use a prismacolor pencil like this one, so you could shade it and get a little bit of mood and tone, that helps to sell the idea. So, you can easily find this on an art store, like if you go to Aaron Brothers or you can easily find a black prismacolor pencil or a sharpie. A sharpie is so easy, you go to Staples and buy one. Anyway, so that's what we would do. Why we're wanting to tell a story of our lives is because everyone went through a story. The question is, how can we tell that visually? So, that's what we're going to be working in this class, is how can we tell a story through visuals? So, I hope my technique is useful to you. So, for the next class, we are going to be looking for the tools and rules of storyboarding one. Thank you so much.
2. Rules & Tools of Storyboarding (Part 1): Hi everyone? Welcome to our second class, Rules and tools of storyboarding one. So, in this section I just would like to share my points in the fundamental tools for storyboarding. To begin with, I would like to talk about types of shots. There's basically three different types of shots: long shot, medium shot, and a close up, like we see here. Long shot, medium shot, close-up. Hundred and eighty degree rule. It's a very important rule because we want to make sure we don't cross this particular line here. So, the camera can move around in this angle here but as soon as it crosses here, it can drive the audience confused. So we want to make sure we keep it within this 180 degree arc that we see here. For instance, you see the lady and the guy. So, the lady is in the left and the guys in the right. Whenever is the reversal, we see the girl in the left and the guy on the right. So, it's a very important rule and we want to make sure we respect it. Draftsmanship. I think it's a really helpful tool because we want to make sure we draw so we are able to tell the stories we want to tell. So I think all the great drawings, they're drawings that there is story telling, they have this kind of quality that they're able to tell a story. They can tell what the characters are thinking. It doesn't have to be a really micolonial drawing. To be a good drawing, what's important is to have a storytelling points in your drawing. So, you can tell that with your mood through colors, it can be simple but still convey amazing storytelling style. So all these aspects are really important. Like for example in this drawing here, we see this giant mentioned, and you see this tiny little guy wearing this red shirt, red shorts, and then he just shaking his legs in water. It's silly and that's the point of this cover, is really to sell this idea. There's this rich guy that I know just doing this simple thing. So all these things are really important in terms of draftsmanship, is that what's the story behind, the story telling ability you have through your drawings. So, let's jump to caricature. Caricature is really important in a sense that we want to make sure we push your pose and you need to make sure also the pose are really clear, what expressions we want to use. We want to make sure we have expression that really show sadness, happiness, character trying to deceive someone, "Who? I didn't do that. " So it's like, you have to be very specific with your expressions, your pose, and I think caricature helps you a lot on that. So I would really keep that in mind when you're working your assignments. Caricature and acting. So all the characters we love from Humphrey Bogart, to Jack Lemmon, to Harrison Ford, as a Han Solo. All those characters a really memorable and we love them, why? Because there are characters that they have, we can relate to them. They have few things that we went through, and we can relate to what they're going through, and do we want them to succeed? Like those guys, they're great characters and we all can relate to them. They have their flaws and everything. But we can relate to their flaws. So this is an example of an antagonist and I think it's a great antagonists. Like it's like a serial killer, and you can see the Plex in that he carries form because it killed. So it's funny, I don't even see the characters out of that truck. So the character itself is a truck. So it is a film called Duel and it's directed by Steven Spielberg when in the beginning of his career, great film. George Costanza, you know like, covered with flaws the terrible human beings, but we all can relate to him. So relatability is a really important factor in a character. All those character are great. Mr. Quaint. They're all really reach and they have a dimension. Now we go to emotion. So, what do you want to tell with your stories? Is it a moment of warmth, is it a moment of good-bye, a moment of telling good bye to someone you really love? Is it a story of all this old man that loved his puppy but he doesn't have the conditions to take care of it anymore, and he doesn't know what to do with it? Is it a story of a loss, for a character that's losing someone he loves? So all that, is really important thing to think to have in mind when you're working on your assignments. Why is it the emotion, what is it the thing that the characters are going through that you want to describe. Entertainment, that's a really important and really one of my favorite things in storytelling, and I think we all love to see entertaining moments in films, and I think they're entertaining because of the characters. You can have a sequences, an action sequence for the explosions, but it doesn't have a purpose, it's not fun, what makes it fun is if there's a purpose behind every sequence. But, like what makes a sequence have a purpose is a drive through a character. So, every movie, all those movies are memorable because of their characters. They're all entertaining because of that. How execute your sequence, I know how all this values are really important. Like in Jurassic Park's, extremely well executed, full of character and that makes a T-Rex. So, menacing and fun. Dynamic between characters, and you see these two characters are pretty much handcuffed. They hate each other, like no, one of them don't hate the other but they don't really, they have very different qualities. They're really different characters, but they're stuck together because they lost their flight in Thanksgiving. So, it makes the situation just fun. You just want to see that. Mood, you can really get a lot of mood if you really play right and if you really use it to really sell your story. You can get a dramatic feel, you can use our direction to really change the colors, and using the light in a specific way to convey specific field. The usage of color again, as a way to be a story point. So, all these things are really important to have in mind, like, what it is? What time is a film set? What kind of direction would you use for that time? So, all those things are really important things to have in mind. So, for next step, I'm going to jump into tools, rules, and tools for storyboarding two. Thank you so much
3. Rules & Tools of Storyboarding (Part 2): Hi, everyone. Welcome to my second class Rules and Tools of Storyboarding. So, now we're going to be covering some aspects of Visual Storytelling and the tools you use to achieve a great rate sequence. So, let's talk about visual storytelling. So basically, we have seven visual components in visual storytelling, which is line, shape, tone, color, space, movement, and rhythm. Each of these components can have contrast difference or affinity similarity. Contrast equal greater visual intensity and affinity equals lesser visual intensity. So, I'm sharing all of you to you guys, because I think they're very important elements in visual storytelling. To show that, I would like to do a little tutorial here. So, if you go to Photoshop here, I am going to just share a little thoughts of our visual component line. So, you see here there's a horizontal, a vertical, and a diagonal. If I have sequence for example that you're just going to see horizontal shots, like horizontal, horizontal, horizontal. There's a lesser visual intensity or we can call affinity. So, there is an affinity in here. There is a greater affinity. But if I add a horizontal and a vertical, the affinity is not as strong. You actually have a higher visual intensity, a contrast like you see here. So, greater visual intensity, contrast. In this case here, I have horizontal, vertical, horizontal and a diagonal. So, with these combinations, we see a higher visual intensity. So, the visual intensity here is much greater than these, and this one is of course much greater than this one. So, being greater, having a greater visual intensity, it doesn't mean it's a better or anything like that. But you have to use these tools depending on what you want to convey. If you want to convey something more neutral, I would use these in a less solution intensity. But then if you want to do something that's very dynamic, you want to make people see they will be able to see, so I would use greater visual intensity. The more you vary those elements, the visual components which are line, shape, tone, color, space, movement, and rhythm, the higher it's going to be the intensity, the visual intensity. So to share a few examples, I would like to show you staging. So, what is staging? Staging is a presentation of an idea in the clearest way possible. So, for example, I'm presenting this idea here of these people in a museum or in a gallery looking at paintings, and it's confusing, don't know where to look at. But you find group everything. It's much clearer what I see and is much more appealing, much more interesting, to look at. In this case here, you see two characters saying goodbye, for example. You see the train passing by in a distance. This shot is good, but if I want to convey something that is more intimate, I go to this shot here. So, it's there's much more intimacy between the two. In this case here, you've seen Superman lifting a car in the air, in the sky. This pose here it's really neutral. Don't tell me too much, it's kind of boring. But then, if I put a camera a little lower. You're going to see it's a much more heroic and what I sell here, there is much more visual intensity here. You'll see all these diagonal lines. There's much more intensity than these short and indeed. So, this is a little bit of staging and I'd like to talk about difference of flat space in deep space. So, this is a flat space, you see this, everything is horizontal, and there's not too much perspective going on. It's really flat. So, we call it flat space. But then as we lower the camera, when you have more angles, you see the progression going on. So, in this short maybe there's two gangsters having pasta in Italian restaurant. Then they start having a dialogue, and you see that sexually some kind of ambush. Then from this shot, we jumped to this, which is a much intense shot as there's lot of diagonal line as the camera is really low, and you see this strong diagonal right here. One other diagonal. Another diagonal in this direction. So, this is a much deeper- we call it deep space. So, flat space, deep space. So, now we're going to jump again to our presentation, and we're going to talk about flat space versus deep space in some shots of films we've seen. So, this is a good example, you see the diagonals coming towards this round shape. It shows great visual intensity. So, there's a lot of depth, flat, this shot is really flat. Everything, horizontal, vertical, without much perspective going on, it's very flat, called a flat space. Flat space, very dynamic, and you see all the verticals coming in this direction here and you see even the camera is tilted a little to give even more diagonals. This shot here, you see it's really flat, flat space. Flat space. You see a lot of that in Stanley Kubrick film, Shining, and you see like how everything, all the perspective coming from a one-point perspective. You see all these diagonal lines merging this direction. Flat space. You see it's a deep space shot and you see how low the camera is, and you see all the verticals, down. Again, talking about grouping, you see how grouped Wes Anderson shots are. So, everything is really clear and you see this tree grouping things here. It's really great. Here, you see another shot, deep space, water pollution, Another Wes Anderson, really well grouped. Flat space. He loves using flat space. Another great way of showing composition very well grouped here, you see all the- Deep Space. Black you see everything's very symmetrical and there's not too much perspective going on. Very deep. You see that another factor that helps this shot is also the contrast of color, you see the tone, there's a lot of- the blacks are really blacks and whites really whites. So, there's no affinity in this shot. It's all about contrast, even the diagonals are- So, all the elements are supporting this shot to be very dynamic. Here, you see another shot, Touch of Evil. Look at the size of him, the comparison to this guy is very powerful. You can tell perspective through that tube, difference of the size. Another shot. Very deep. A lot of deep space, lot of angles. Diagonals. So, that's it. So, I hope everyone enjoyed this class and please try to use these tools in your assignments as you bored. Please try to explore all the elements of line and flat space, deep space to really like convey an idea and the best way as possible. So, I hope this was helpful, I'll see you very soon. Thank you.
4. Generating Three Ideas: Hi everyone. Welcome back to our class. So, in this class, we're going to specifically be talking about our three ideas that we will be picking our best idea, and we're going to actually visualize it through storyboards. So, l would like just to talk a little bit of each of the ideas I picked. So, the first idea I picked is this one where I went to the restaurant to meet my friend, specifically Denny's. We were at Denny's, and then there's this weird thing that ants start popping from my head for some reason. We were eating like a pasta, and then this ant just falls right into the pasta. I was like, "What the hell." Then, I start shaking my body. So, where it's coming from? Then, nothing. I can't find anything. Then I see another ant popping in, and it's like, "What the hell?" Then, I shake my hair. It's not in my hair. So, they really made me panicked and my friend was really start getting freaked out, and he thought there was ants in his body. So, that was a pretty funny scenario. I thought it could be a good interesting idea to storyboard. This idea here is my second idea, and I titled it, Pretzel Idea. It's pretty much just the story were, me and my girlfriend were watching Game of Thrones. I'm big fan of Game of Thrones, and I, as you can see through my accent, I'm a foreigner. English is my second language. So, it's difficult to watch Game of Thrones because there are so many houses and characters. So, it's difficult for me to focus. So, I even need sub-titles. But what happens my girlfriend decided to bring this pretzel, giant bag of pretzels and started eating, and making this chewing noise, and really making me distracted. So, I couldn't really read the sub-titles, I couldn't understand it. So, I thought of this idea was really fun too. Then, there's my third idea which was my difficulties for teaching this class in SkillShare. It's a great class. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the process. But it was really intimidating first, because I was like, "Oh my God." I first thought it would be really easy, and then I had this online chat with one of the Skillshare mentor and I asked her, "How can I start this class?" I didn't even know to start? She was like, "You are the master, you know everything that is to know on this class. You're going to figure out, you're going to be fine." I was like, "Ah, okay. I will." But deep inside, I was like, "Oh man, I'm screwed. They're going to all find out that I'm a hoax, I'm a charlatan." So, I was really freaked out. So, I had all these thoughts, these terrible thoughts about what people are going to start reviewing me on Yelp, or give me this terrible views, and people in English is going to start thinking I really suck. So, that story, I thought it was a lot of potential for entertainment. So, l picked it too. So, in the end, I had to pick one idea from the three of them. So, what idea was picked? So, the best idea goes to the Pretzel Idea. So, that was idea that I picked and I thought it was closer to my heart, and it was an idea that I thought it was more entertainment value. It was an idea that was more potential for character development, and all of these characteristics that we discussed in rules and tools for storyboard one. So, why the other ideas were rejected? Because they didn't have those points that we discuss in rules and tools of storyboarding one, which is entertainment, emotion, mood, character, structure. I thought the Pretzel Idea had much more. So, just to give an example why the Skillshare didn't work when I just pitched to you what to me is that I was just exploring a little bit. So, starting from here, I was really freaked out like I was actually just sketching in my Cintiq, then I get this email from Skillshare pops in my screen, and it tells me like, "Would you like to teach a class?" I was like, "Oh sure." I thought it just will be easy. Then, I had this talk, this chat online with the Skillshare manager, and I was like, "So, how can he start this class?" She told me, "Well, you are the master. You know the answer. You know everything," and I was like, "Oh my God." I started having this little angel Leo and the little devil Leo in my head. The angel Leo tells me that it's going to be fun, I can do it, and the devil Leo tells me, "You can do it. You're a hoax, you're a charlatan." So, I asked my girlfriend for some help. She says she can't because that week, she's going to be traveling and I just get devastated. The demon Leo just starts harassing me and tells me, "You can't do it. You suck." And then when I was like, "I can't really do this." This Yoda Leo comes down, and he tells me, "Believe in yourself. Believe in who you are. The skill is strong within you," and then I was like I had an epiphany. I can do it. So, I slashed the demon Leo in half with a light-saber, and then I was happy with the angel Leo and the Yoda Leo, and with a clock expression, I realized I can teach. So, that was an entertaining assignment somehow, but it was lacking a character development. It was really wacky and really superficial. So I thought we had more potential in the pretzel idea. So, I'm looking forward to see what ideas each of one is going to come up from you. So, pick three ideas, and for these three ideas, you pick one. Taking into consideration, all the rules and tools of storyboarding that we had in our first class. So, hope you enjoy the class. See you very soon.
5. Sample Research: Hi, everyone. Welcome to our next class which we'll be discussing about research. So, now that we've picked our best idea, we're going to jump into doing some research so we can be specific with what we want to say. So, do you still remember where did that happen? The props, the settings, the characters that are involved in it. So, everything that you can remember can enrich your story when you tell it visually. So, I would really recommend you to do your research that's going to really make your work much more meaningful and specific. So, let me share a little bit of a personal research I did in one assignment that I just worked for me. I just would like to share a little bit of it. It's the story of me and my mum when I was my childhood. So I wanted so bad this toy, this castle. That time it was so expensive, my mom didn't have that much money so it was almost impossible to buy, but I cried so much that everyone in the toy store was freaked out and they say, "Oh, what a terrible mom." So my mom just had no choice, but to buy it to me. So, it's pretty much that's the story, and the research I'm going to show is the research for this story. So as you can see, that's me when I was a kid. I was very feisty, very energetic, and a little spoiled. Here is more pictures, and I can see that's my mother and me. My mom and me, and here is the castle. It's the Gray School castle, actually. The one from Masters Of The Universe. I've blob and it had all the toys and some research pictures that I got from it. In your research feel free to use the Internet or the library, anywhere you want. Nowadays, the internet gives you so many possibilities for research. So easy to do research. So, I will recommend you anything that can help. Like here I used pictures from my family's album picture. So, anything that helps you to be specific. So yeah, some more pictures, more image. I wanted to be really specific, but I love this story so much and I think there was so much character in that period of time that I was and I thought it could really help me tell the story. This is one of the toys through that it's involved in the story. This is the car that my mum had at that time. It was this old beetle, really old and I was actually ashamed to enter the car because it didn't look cool. So, and here is my personal story sample. That's the story that I was going to tell all storyboarded based on my research. So, as you can see right away, you can tell that the research influencing my work already. Yeah, you see that and you see the Gray School castle in the back. So, they really helped me to be specific. If I just came out of the blue and said, "Okay, that's how you look like", you would look very generic. So, you really enriched experience. Yeah, so that's me in her old car. So, you can see the elements pretty well, and me, how I looked like when I was a kid. My mom too. That's pretty much how she looked like. Anyway, if you want to see the full story you can check my blog www.lillematsuda-blog.blogspot.com and you can check the blog. The link is in my class profile. So, please feel free to check it if you want to know more about that story. Now that we're done, I just would like to emphasize, please build like a folder with those research images and try to apply them when you start storyboarding, because that's going to be really helpful. So I hope this class was helpful, and I'm looking forward to see you in next class where I'll be showing you my research for the pretzel idea. Thank you so much.
6. Research for Pretzel Story: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to our class now, which we will be discussing research for Pretzel Story. So, now that we went through, in the previous class, talking about the process of research. I showed you that example with the Gray School castle. Now that we know, we have an idea, what it is, how we can approach research, we can actually jump into researching, into our idea that we picked. So, the idea I picked was a Pretzel. So, now I'm going to share some of the research that I did for it. Before I start it, I just would like to say, please even though it's based on an image research, feel free to really add, that's where creativity comes, where your job as storyboard artist comes in. You have to tell not only what you saw, but you have to make it more poetic, to exaggerate it, to tell a story that makes the audience seat in the edge of their seat. So, our job is to not only describe what happened, our job is to dramatize. So, let's jump into the research I did for the Pretzel story. It's pretty much me watching Game of Thrones. So I was like wow, I was just looking in the Internet what images I could find. The episode was one where involved Jeffrey, this character here and he's like a little terrible guy just want to- He's just hideous, you just hate these kids so much. I just found this image that really described this expression he has and I really enjoyed it. So, that's pretty much the sequence that is going to appear in my storyboard, and involved those characters here with this Tyrion Lannister. Here's one shot that had some subtitles. So, I thought it could be really helpful because I will have me reading subtitles in my story. So, that would help my research. No images of the characters I was going to have my story. Here's some images that could help me too for composition sake. I will just look in different angles and what would be or gesture. Me and my girlfriend, because we were watching through a laptop. How would we be behaving? How would we be really close or will be like farther? Also, I was just doing this research to see how the interaction would be. That's just for the sake of the composition. So,its just images of pretzels and I really want to be specific to what kind of pretzel we were eating. This is just images of people eating pretzels and close ups of mouths chewing, like two guys eating pretzels. So, yeah. Then a giant bag of pretzels which is similar to what she was holding. My girlfriend loves Costco, so she always buys things that are like family size. So, it was a family size pretzel. I am going to go to the exploration of the drawings based on pretzel research. Here, I was just trying to go through my references and push it and get to a point where I want a board that, that's what I want to see in my story. So, these of course, I'm not going to show an image of it, a picture of it, that's the schematics on my girlfriend's house. So, here's the sofa where we stayed when we were watching Games of Thrones. I did this layout because I'm going to use this whole schematic to tell the story. So, it's really useful for geography sake for you to have the schematic of whatever you're going to storyboard, the settings of whatever you're going to storyboard. Here's pretty much the place where we're going to be most of the time and yeah, she has a little Ottoman where we put our feet here and have laptops in our laps. That's me here and that's my girlfriend. Yeah, she's much taller than me, that's actually not really caricature, that's pretty close reality. She loves pretzels and she just loves, loves pretzels. I'm really into myself, and I'm selfish a little bit, sometimes. I was just trying to see what will be the size of the pretzel bag and it was too small all here. So, I just crossed it. Here, pretzel bag, pretty big, Costco bag, and I want to exaggerate. It wasn't that big but I really want to push it to be pretty big. Then I said well, let's keep pushing more. Maybe it's the size of the pretzel bag but then he is just too much. It completely becomes too cartoony. So, you want to have a size that's exaggerated but you know it doesn't cross the line. So this is just some research for the character the Game of Thrones characters that are going to be watching laptop the Joffrey little, the little, the terrible little guy. Nolan, Tyrion Lannister, here's a shot of me, an exploration of me and my girlfriend, and that pretty accurate like when you're in a car and she has a huge herring are like curly. It's beautiful hair but it's really curly and and it's big. So, I, of course, exaggerate a little, but I thought it would be really funny if maybe in his story at some point her hair gotten my way and annoyed me even more. I try that, explore that theme, maybe her hair's bump into my head and I can't see. But then I was like, well, that's not the point of this story, I need to make the story simple. So, I thought all may be if I made it all about the pretzel, so the hair is not getting my ways, is all about the practicum. So, when you work on your story, try to keep it simple. Simple is better because it gives you a better control over it. If you have too much, if you want to tell too much, you're going to get lost in a not going to focus on anything. You will rather be specific in one idea in really exploring it than doing too much. This is interesting theme that I wanted to do, because whenever she chews like you see here, you see crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, and whenever you hear this noise, you see the subtitles get all distorted. That represents me having a hard time reading the subtitles, having a hard time focusing. So, there was like some imagery system that I built, that are created, so the audience could understand when I'm not being able to focus. This is just the final shot of the whole layout how I wanted to look like. So that's pretty much how I want the story to look like. So, I guess that's it everyone. I hope I was able to clarify a little bit of what the purpose of our research in or before I storyboarding. So, please now that you're probably a little more aware about researching. Try to really come up with your exploration. Really push your research and be creative but still grounded on research. I think that's a great way to really start your storyboarding your sequence. Okay. Thank you so much everyone, and I'll see you very soon.
7. Paradigm: Hi, everyone. So, now that we're done with phase three, we're going to jump into phase four. Now, it's our time to get all we did in our exploration, all the research and start applying into our paradigm. We're going to start organizing our thoughts. So, to begin with, I would like to share a little bit of what it is a paradigm. So, every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A character wants something, he actively pursues his goal, he either gets it or not. So, something has to happen from the beginning to the end. If you tell a story and nothing happens, you would not have a satisfying ending. So, it's simple as that, a character wants something, he goes for it and he gets it or not. So, that shows we have a clear beginning, middle and ending. Even sequence, they have a beginning, a middle and an end. Everything you do, no matter the size, no matter if it's a sequence, or no matter if it's a feature, you need to have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Or at least you need to reveal some information and move the story forward. So, you have to tell something when you're storing, you can't just tell something that doesn't go anywhere, so you have to get somewhere. So, we're going to share a little bit about what it is a paradigm. So, the paradigm is this chart that you see here. I'm going to use an example. So, when you're structuring your idea, you should first ask yourself, what does my character wants? So, then, when you know what he wants, you go for your paradigm. So, your paradigm needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. So, at the beginning of this story, your character, he's just living his life the way he lives and then something happens. Then your character wants to keep pursuing his goal, so he keeps moving forward but there's a lot of obstacles in his way. So, toward this little section here, let's call it maybe a second act. So, you see there's lot obstacles going on. In the midpoint of this paradigm, the stakes are bigger, stakes are raising. So, and then there's a moment that everything is ruined, like your characters is in the "all is lost" moment. But then, here he gets an epiphany, so he realize what he really wants. He realized he hasn't assumes an arc completed here. Then, we go to the third act, let's call it that. Then, we lead to the ending. So basically, in an easier way, we have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Something happens, the lot of obstacles comes in your character's way, then gets to a point that the damage is so big that we go to the "all is lost" moment. But then, your character has realization, an epiphany. Then, everything set to balance but your character is different now. So, it's a structure you may use for feature films but you can always use for a short story that you're going to tell. It doesn't have to be complicated but your character needs to go through some change. Your character need, that's all the stories they need to have some change or character goal to some change, an interior change or an exterior change but it has to be some changing. So, now, we're going to. I'm going to share the paradigm of my story. If you go here, it's going to open Photoshop. So, as we see here, I built another paradigm similar as this one. I'm going to use this as a basis to explain what is my plan? Based on exploration, what is the thoughts? How are you going to organize the story? So, in the beginning, before I start writing and going after, what does my character want? So, the character is me, so what I want, I want watch Game of Thrones, real bad, that's all I want. I just want to watch it because I'm really, I love it, I just want to watch it. Then, so we set the beginning. Then, I want to watch Game of Thrones, since the beginning. Then, Kate brings a giant bag of pretzels and start chewing it and making a lot of noise, so I can't focus. So, in the middle, I blow up, I just yell at her, I just can't stand it anymore because she keeps chewing, she doesn't stop and I can't focus or I just blow up and I yell at her. I said, "Just stop it, you're annoying me." So, you see that's the midpoint, the steaks are bigger. So, I just blew out of proportion, I get upset. Then, I storm. She's rude back to me and she tells me just to chill out, so I get really, I just lose it. So, I storm back to my room and that's the "all is ruined" "all is lost" moment. So, she's upset, I'm upset too in the room, so we are both upset. Then, I see Kate crying and I go, I open the door I see that she's crying and that really hits me, I realize how much egotistical I've been. I've been thinking about myself and she loves pretzels chewing but I'm just thinking what I want to do. So, that's my epiphany, I realized, wow, I need to share. That's a relationship, I need to learn how to share. So, from that, yeah, I realized that how selfish I am and how I'm not sharing it all. Then, I have this epiphany and then I have a solution. So, I decided that we're going to watch a silent film, so we can both eat pretzels. So, we do both at the same time, we can watch something together and we can also eat pretzels together. So, we learn, I learned how to share and so we both compromise. So, that's my structure, that's how we're going to. Now, I have the blueprint or my story, so I'm not going to get lost, I know exactly what I want to do. That's, I think, each of you should do. You should build this structure, know what your character wants and then you build a paradigm with all this points here. Use that as a way for a starting point for you to build your paradigm. So, as soon as we're done with that, we're going to start thumbnailing. So, thanks so much and I hope that was helpful, so we can keep moving along. Thanks so much.
8. Thumbnails: Hi everyone. Now, we're going to go to our step two of phase four. I'm going to be talking about thumbnailing. Why do you use a thumbnail? Thumbnail, as the name says already, they're tiny sketches that you could do. They are pretty much blueprints. What's the difference from the thumbnail's form or paradigm? The differences now with the thumbnails, we're going to start visualizing it through pictures. So, based on all steps, all phase we went through, exploration and everything, and all we got from the exploration, all the drawings, all the image we saw from research and we pushed in the exploration phase, we're going to start using here in the thumbnail phase. So, the thumbnail is the phase that you feel comfortable enough so we can actually start sketching something and putting into a structure. So, to begin with, I would like just to mention that in this stage, please don't focus in making pretty drawings. Be as rough as you possibly can because you're going to have time to do something nicer when you're boarding, in your third pass. Right now, the focus is the thought process. So, I would say keep it lose. Keep it lose. As long as you are selling the idea, that's what really matters. Keep it broad. It's just the main poles. It's the main points. So, let's do it. As I mentioned before, I'm going to start from the beginning, if you see from the paradigm. So, what I want, I want to watch Game of Thrones. So, that's what I'm doing here. As you see, me and my girlfriend were sitting on a coach. See how rough it is? Sorry for the roughness of it, but it's just for the sake of just being in a direction of what I should do next. So, here's me and my girlfriend. We're sitting in the couch and with our legs on the ground and we're watching Game of Thrones. We are really excited. I'm really focused. Then my girlfriend leaves and she comes back with a giant bag of pretzels and starts chewing. You see there, on her mouth, crunch, crunch, crunch. I just want to be polite at first. I don't say anything but she keeps on doing it. There's a point I can't fucking understand anything going on in the episode. Five minutes has passed and I can't really understand anything. So I just calm and I just tell her in kind of a loud voice, "Please stop it. I'm trying to watch it." She kind of gets offended. So, she tells me, "Just chill out, dude." She just tells me, as you can see here. Then I just lose it. I just get so angry. I'm yelling at her, and I get absolutely mad and I leave. I go to my room. I close the door and then stay there. Then, I start hearing that she's blowing her nose and things like that. Then I open the door and I see that she's actually crying. Her makeup is all messed up, all this Kleenex around her. Then, we go to this one here. I see that and my hand comes in and touch hers, and I tell her that's okay. I'm so sorry. That's the epiphany moment where I realize that I'm being such a jerk, and then I'm being selfish. Then, I decided that at the same time, we can both eat pretzels and we can keep watching something. We decide, we're watching a silent film, Charlie Chaplin film, where I can finally focus because I don't need subtitles to see that. So, there it is. My thumbnails translated from the paradigm. So, I used the paradigm as a starting point so I could get those visuals. Even though they're so rudimentary, all the thought process is there. So now, we can finally start on a storyboard. We can jump into actually, finally start boarding our story. So, I hope this process was clear to you. So, we can keep moving on. Now, we're going to move to our fifth phase. So, thanks so much everyone. Hope you enjoyed.
9. First Pass: Hi, everyone. So, yeah, we made it really far. So, now, we're ready to start storyboarding. So, I'll give you guys ahead in a great job. So, now, that we know our structure. We know we did our exploration or research or exploration, we know our structure now and we did or thumbnails. So now, we can start really dive into continuity. So, for the first pass, although I would rather not go straight continuity but to go to like a beat pass. So, it's going to be very beaty. But everything is going to be there like the older visual storytelling components, all the tools like perspective, the staging, everything we're going to- now is the time to start thinking of all those things. We can add things from the thumbnailing process. We can start adding things. It's a very organic process, so don't think that because you have the paradigm there. You have the thumbnail. You have to fall that like restrictively. You are open to do anything you want. That's just a guide for you so you don't get lost. So, it's a very flexible process but I think it's good when you have a direction. You plan everything ahead so you don't get lost. So, let's start with our first pass. So, as we saw from our thumbnail, we saw that here what I want, I want to watch Game of Thrones. So, I'm here excited watching Game of Thrones. Kate is there with me, too. We're all excited. I see Tyrion Lannister just slapping Joffrey. It's awesome. It's so great to see that. I'm so excited and really focusing so bad like really. Then I start hearing some crunching sounds and there it is. That's Kate and she's just eating her giant bag of pretzels and at first, I'm just trying to be polite. I don't say anything. But she keeps on doing it, she keeps on doing, she doesn't- she's very oblivious about that. I just give a look and I keep hearing, "Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack.". While I'm hearing this, "Crack, crack, crack, crack," the subtitles are all messed up. I can't understand anything of it. So, I just tells her, "Please, please, can you stop? I'm trying to pay attention," in a polite way. Then I keep hearing, "Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack." And then I just completely lose it. I just kind of yell at her and I don't even care about being polite anymore. She just ignores me, she's little rude. She tells me, "Just chill out, dude." And she keeps eating her pretzels. So, I get so upset. I just tend to stand up and leave. So, I just leave and you can tell she's very upset and then I started hearing like, I go to my room and then I start hearing this blowing the nose thing quietly. As I opened the door and I see that she's actually crying and I get that really hates me. So, that's the moment of my epiphany. So, I come and I touch her hand and I tell her, "It's okay. I'm so sorry. I'm being such a jerk." I have an idea so we both- instead of just her eating pretzel, we both share it. We both are eating. Our mouth is full of pretzels, chewing, making lot of noise and we're also watching Charlie Chaplin, which is a silent film. So, it doesn't, we can do both, we can share no. She can eat her pretzel that she loves and we can watch something great, and I can still focus on it because it doesn't need subtitles as silent film. So, everything that we saw on the thumbnailing is here and then the paradigm. So, it's really great to have that first step of the thumbnailing. So, we could use that as a basis so we can now start focusing, take it into another direction, to another level. So, you can tell here that the perspective is all here, the staging, everything the way I want. All those things we discussed about visual storytelling or where you want to put a camera, a flat staging deep space, flat space, deep space, and all like the line; diagonals, verticals, horizontals, how to bring up the visual intensity, contrast, affinity. So, that's the time to start thinking of all those thing and really sort of planning our sequence. So, you can tell that it's really building. It's not really in continuity, but you can get the idea and I really jump from these straight to my next pose so I can make it in continuity. So, our second pass is going to be a pass in continuity. It was still missing our A's and B's and pose, some acting, so it's not a flashed-out version yet but it's going to be a version in continuity. So, yeah. So, I hope you're more clear about what is a storyboarding now that we actually started jumping, and I hope you're ready to jump on your assignment and really have fun with it. Please have fun. Don't forget to have fun. Don't worry too much. Make sure you follow your structure but make sure you have fun because that's how we can tell great stories.
10. Second Pass: Hi, everyone? So, now that we're done with our first pass, it's time for us to jump in continuity. So, we're going to jump to our second pass and you can start adding everything in continuity. So, it's not as biddy as it was in the first pass and you're going to see a flow from one shot to the next. So, it's not something that it just cuts from one thing to in a very abrupt way. It's a very smooth transition from one shot to the next. You need to make sure we keep in mind all the rules and tools of star boarding it out the rules and tools one and two. Like we need to make sure we don't cross the 180 degree line and we can use our shots, long shot, close-up, medium shot. So, that's the time we can start adding to our first pass. So, let's begin with so I'm just driving really quick. You see car driving quick, car parks, I run to the building. We just turn on the laptop with HBO Go and we just catch the last episode of the week. Just very excited, very anxious and we start watching it and start giggling because this is something awesome. Yeah, we see Tyrion just slapping Joffrey's head. His crown just flies and we just cheer, "Yehey!" We're excited and Kate leaps and you see that she's leaving and then you hear, Tywin Lannister, "Your sister, we will have to marry one of the Tyrells and you will have to create a Lannister out of Sansa. That's final." And then you see that I'm really focusing and my eyes are intense. There's intensity in my eyes and and then it's starting, "Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack". And you see that Kate is right there eating a pretzel,"Crack, crack." Making a lot of noise, "Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack," and then I just want to be polite. I don't say anything. I expect her to have a common sense and stop it. But the noise keeps on going, "Crack, crack, crack." After one is another one, "Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack," and then I look and try to pay attention. It's been already five minutes that she's been eating it and I can't really focus in and I'm getting really annoyed because I want to understand what's going on but I can not read the subtitles and they're all distorted because the chewing and then, "Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack." I just tend to say, "Please stop, please. Please. I'm trying to pay attention." And then Kate is kind of a little offended but she tries to collaborate so she bites tiny bits, "Cre, cre, cre, cre, cre." You see the noise keeps on going. It's tinier but it's even more annoying, "Cre, cre, cre, cre, cre, cre, cre, cre." Then I just go- you see my crazy eyes and then I just, "Shut up! Can't you just shut up." I just completely lose it and Kate is kind of really offended now and she's like, "Chill out dude. Just chill out and then I just kind of is just so outrageous for me. I just kind of like I can't stand it and I just push the computer and I just walk to the room and I leave her alone in the court and you see that she is kind of sad, and then I start of course reading Game of Thrones, the book, I start hearing likes some kind of cry and I go, I opened the door and see that Kate is quietly crying. That really, really touched me. It really hits me. I see that she- all this Kleenex all over and I touch her hand. Her eyes all messed up with the makeup and I tell her what a jerk I am and she asked if I still want to watch Game of Thrones and I said, "That's okay. I have a better idea." And then we cut to the giant bag of pretzels. Now, we're both making that terrible noise and where our mouth is full of pretzels. We're just eating pretzels while we watch a silent film with Charlie Chaplin and that's the end. So, you see that I added a few things here and there and if you pause, like it didn't have this beginning here like you see we're driving the car. I added to add a tension of me wanting to go back home to watch Game of Thrones. So, I added a few shots here and there are closeups to add a tension like closeups of my eyes. I added a closeup of her eating. So, there are a few things here and there and I want to show a demonstration of adding a little more pose because when it come from this shot here, I'm actually looking to the laptop. Here is like a jump cut, so it's not right. I need to have a pose where I'm looking to the computer. So, we can do that. I can show you how approach. So, usually lower the opacity here, you see and you add a new layer and you can add a pose drawing of me. You can start with this structure here, draw the glasses. I'm kind of like-the look like I can't believe like really disturbed. So and then, add the hair and feel free to use the brush you feel comfortable with. Everyone is different. Everyone has a different type of brush. I usually lower the saturation, the opacity here on the floor to 60% because I really like the feel of it. It feels like a pencil. So yeah, so now, you have a new pose of me staring into the computer right here before we jumped into this pose here. So that was a necessary pose because you don't want to jump cut from a shot that I'm staring at the monitor and then you cut to me looking to Kate. So, you needed that pose A here you see. You need the pose A. So now, you have two A and B. So, great. So now, I did a little tutorial where I show you, I show you how I approach posing. So now, we are ready to go to our third pass and I hope you guys are enjoying the process. Thank you.
11. Final Pass: Hi, everyone. So, welcome to our third pass. Congratulations to all of you that made it so far. I know it's a long journey but here we are. So, in our final pass, we're finally going to be able to flash out our whole story, and we are going to be able also to start cleaning up our drawings. For the sake of time, we weren't able to clean up all the drawings because it just takes a really long time. But I am going to show tutorial in our next class and just to- my approach on cleanup. So, I would like now to pitch my final idea. So, we cut to this corner of the street, this car coming in full speed, just parks, it's me driving. Kate says, "We still have five minutes left." I say, "We got to go, we got to go." I just jump from the car and just run. Kate wants to give me her hand, I don't even see it. I just ignore her. I just run as fast as I can. I come to the top of the stairs, about to type the passcode. I just don't remember it, I just get pissed off. Kate comes in and types it. The door opens, we run inside watching HBO Go, Game of Thrones, from my laptop. We pick the episode of the week. We're all excited there watching. Start giggling. Suddenly you just hear like a- and it's Tyrion Lannister slapping King Joffrey in the face. The crown flies away. We are just bursting in excitement, "Yohoo! Yehey!". Kate just stands up and she leaves for a moment. "Your sister will have to marry one of the Tyrells, and you will have to create a Lannister out of Sansa. That's final." Then, you see my eyes all intense and focused on what in the dialogue. It's so complicated. There's so many houses in description. I'm just trying to focus so bad, I love it, I'm really into it. Kate comes in finally with a giant bag of pretzels of course. Camera adjusts a little bit. She grabs on pretzel and bites on it. Then, I just hear the noise and it distracts me a little and then I look. Swallows it. I go back to watch it. "The day you were born, I wanted to carry you into sea and let the waves wash you away. But instead, I-" "Can you please stop, Kate? I can't really focus, okay?" There's this awkward silence. Kate is a little offended but she still wants to cooperate. So, she slowly grabs another pretzel, gives a little bite, a tiny bite. She keeps biting in and she keeps eating. The noise is even worse than it was before because now it is this tiny annoying little noise. I'm trying to focus on the subtitles. "And you serve faithfully. You will be rewarded with a suitable wife, and I would let myself be consumed by maggots." Then, you see my eyes just pop, like crazy eyes, Leo's crazy eyes. "Just shut up, shut up. I'm trying to watch a movie here." "Chill out dude, just chill out." You see that Kate is pissed off with me now. She grabs a pretzel and start chewing. "Ah! Just eat your bag of pretzels; I'm going to my room." I just storm off. Kate's sad. Got inside of the room. I'm reading, of course, the book of Game of Thrones. I start hearing someone blowing her nose. I approach the door. I see that Kate is crying in silence. Then I realize what a jerk I've been the whole time. Then you see Kleenex all over the place. She is about to reach for another one, then my hand comes in and touch hers. I see her eyes. Her eyes are just mess, the makeup is all over her face. "I'm so sorry. I promise I'm not going to eat a pretzel anymore." "Why? You love pretzels so much." Then I just clean up her makeup, we both smile at each other. There's a tender moment between us. Then we cut to the giant bag of pretzels. Kate pulls out, see her hand comes in, another hand. We're both seated, we both have our mouths full of pretzels and we're eating, while we're watching a silent film. So now, we were able to share. I was finally able to not be egotistic and share, so we could both compromise and do the things we love the most. I could watch my film, and she could eat her pretzels. That's the end. So, as you can see, there's the clearer, the structure is there, everything plays very well and, of course, we can keep polishing it so we can keep making it better. But for the most part, you can see that the elements are there. So, just to recap, I just going to show a couple of things I did that you too can apply in your assignment. You can see that I tried to incorporate all the phase that we discussed so far. So, there is the part of rules and tools of story boarding one and two, you know that, are clearly in here. I'm just going to mention a couple of these things that I had. So, in this beginning here, when I come with a car and I tried to convey some character introduction of me, I tried to show how egotistical I am. Kate wants to give me her hand, and I just ignore it. So, that shows how egotistical I am. So, that just shows a little bit of character. It's a great way to introduce your character. We didn't have that before, so that's something part of the flashed out. So, that's something that is very organic and even though we have a structure there, that doesn't mean we can add things. We're free. It's a very flexible structure so we are able to add anything we really want. Another thing I added too, it was some A and B pause. As you can see here, you see Kate chewing and we didn't have that before. I add that so we could get a sense of entertainment and a sense of comedy. You can tell like some subtle acting things like my eyes, like you can tell here my eyes darting, and that gives some acting too. You can also see this moment where Kate slowly reached for the bag of pretzels after I yelled at her. So, that shows a little bit of acting too, for the fact that she didn't want to make noise, but she still wanted to eat her pretzels. So, if she just went straight and grabbed a pretzel, that would really not be entertaining and it wouldn't show character. So, those little moments are examples of a good, maybe acting way of showing what you want to sell. Another example too is example of emotion that I tried to cover here. So, you see that I'm back in my room and I started hearing someone blowing her nose, I opened the door and I see Kate crying. So, that shows an example of it's like a very tender moment. That's the moment of epiphany where I realized what a jerk I've been. If I showed that moment through like a long shot, that wouldn't really work because it had to be an intimate moment. You had to see from my point of view, so it has to be a close-up. So we go back to our first class where I talked about shots; long shot, medium shot, and also like a close-up. So, that's a good example of the use of staging and how would you approach, how we use the different shots. So, yeah. I hope this class now was really useful to you. Now, we're going to jump to a little tutorial where we're going to be sharing a little bit of my approach on cleaning up. Thank you so much.
12. Final Pass Cleanup Tutorial: Now I'm going to clean up one drawing. So, you get an idea of how is the process of cleanup. Unfortunately, because of time constraints, we weren't able to clean up all the drawings but cleaning up one shot is going to give you an idea of how you cannot clean up all your sequence. So, let's do it. So, to clean up, I usually leave it 100 percent opacity in flow, I usually like a smaller, I just add a blank layer on top and I just lowered capacity, and also you can still see the drawing underneath. So, it's just a layer on top with a translucency. So, you just add a new layer on top of that as you can see here, and you can start cleaning up your drawings. So, as you see the cleanup part, it's pretty demanding, it takes a lot of time, that's why we try to avoid it to clean up too early because then it could be like a waste of time. You spent all this time on cleaning up and it's not your structure is not ready yet. So, I strongly recommend to just start cleaning up your stuff in your third person. So, it looks pretty clean, it looks very nice you can be more sophisticated with your drawings, and I can even going to add a little bit of tone just for the sake of just to show final product to you. I still like it to be a little rough, so we give he has some life, because if you leave it choose leaking, you'd completely lose the expression of the pose. So, yeah, and keep in mind, everyone has a different approach, and we like different brushes. I specifically like to clean up this way, but you will find your own way that is comfortable to you, and that goes from person to person. It's like each person has a very specific, different types of food you enjoy. It's a question of taste, the question of the way you enjoy, the way you draw, like my style was very cartoony, but that doesn't mean you have to have a cartoony style. You can have a style that's more realistic or very anatomical, and that doesn't really matter. Whatever you would like to sell, that's what important. As long as you sell your idea the way you want to convey, that's what matters. We can add a little glow in the eyes here, something like glasses. So, always having in mind the things that we discussed through rules and tools of storyboarding, in how draftsmanship, how you want to be able to have a storytelling drawing, a drawing that it's able to sell a story, that's what it is a story sketch. It's drawing that has to have a lot of life in itself, it has to tell a story in a very bold and clear way. You don't really have a lot of time when you're working in a production, you have to be fast. So, you have to find a fast approach for you. So, you can bore, you can clean up, and do all the things very quickly. So, as you see, things are being ready, taking a more clean shape. Details here, you can add some texture. So, yeah and then now, you can clean up in another layer the backgrounds, and then you can add those props. I really like adding background because that helps a lot if you in terms of character, and I think knowing what it is in the setting, always gives so much more character and it's much more specific when you give these little details of what objects are in the setting. So, the Ottoman, couch right here, then you can even add another layer. I work in a lot of different layers and so if you need to add more poles, you already have those layers right there. So, there's the window and it doesn't have to be like I said like really it's leek. As long as it's clear, and that's what's really important, clarity. So, right now we have our window, and we can tell that the perspective columns. So, the horizon line is around here, so we see all the converging lines coming from the the horizon line. So, that vanishing point. So, yeah. So, we can see the drawing that clean up, so it's pretty, looks pretty decent. Right? So, you can add as much detail as you wish. It can't go forever, so let's stop right here, and we're going to just add some tone. So we can add some tone, so we can have an idea of how I approach toning and things like that. You could add some tone in the hair. I usually work in gray tones when you storyboard, you don't want to worry too much about coloring because if you're storyboarding, you're not making a comic book or it's you got to make sure just to tell through simpler way your thought process. So, then what I would say, let's add some tone in the background, we'll add some tone right here. So, maybe what about we can have some tone coming from background and maybe we can add. So, here you can try to work with a line, with the mood. So, you see that the morning there lights coming from here. So, that could help adding some mood to this. So, you can play around with these, we can even add, change the saturation a little. So, you see already it gives so much more mood in just the way it was before. You can add even another gradient, here even a little more. Maybe there's some glow here, because there is some light, and couch, and you can add shade there. So, all these things contribute to the tone. So, you can add some tone to the eyes. So, there we go. So, it's pretty, we can also. So, yeah. It's a really good stage I guess, it sells the idea pretty clearly, and yeah. So, yeah. I hope everyone enjoyed this process and for it took a little while, and also that's for you to have an idea of how long it take to clean up the drawing, that's why we would avoid to really do it in a very early stage. So, well, a hand of applause for all of you. Great job, I hope I can give critics to you guy's work and please stop by at my class, and I hope everyone really were able to observe some of my techniques, my approach, and I'm looking forward to teach you guys again sometime soon. Okay. So, keep rocking on and see you very soon. Bye.
Leo M., Story Artist at Walt Disney Studios
