Tom Fox Draws

Men At Arms - Page 86-88

Another storyboard study from a book - Terry pratchett's "Men at Arms". I boarded this scene in a couple of days, and accidentally deleted the thumbnails. I used the same process as in the last post :)

In this scene the main characters are investigating the murder of a small dragon by interviewing the dragon breeder.

I'm still looking over the notes from Rej's course, and simplicity is slowly working its way into my work. I'm mostly focusing on trying to do no more than 2/3 poses per shot, and limiting camera moves, so I can increase the amount of story told with fewer panels. It's easy to over-animate and lose sight of the fact that you're trying to tell a story, rather than make a nice animation.

Having learnt from two increadible teachers already this year, I can see the improvement in every new sequence. Any notes or feedback are always appreciated :)

Lords and Ladies Study

I'm back from taking an incredible storyboard course with Rej Bourdages last week at Aardman! It'd be very difficult to put into words how much I learnt last week, but here's a quick summary:

1/ Pitching boards live is fun

2/ If you can't draw it out on a small piece of paper, you're drawing way too much detail.

3/ Boarding is about ideas, not drawing. But drawing helps.

4/ Thumbnail first, plan the number of shots etc, then go in after and make sure it's CLEAR NOT clean.

5/ Draw shapes not volumes. Volume is useful, but clear drawings rely mostly on visual symbols, rather than rotating form.

Big thankyou to Rej for taking the time to teach us, and to Aardman for inviting me :)

Anyway, here's a little addition to my portfolio: A short scene from Terry Pratchett's "Lords and Ladies". He's one of my favourite writers, and it's a great exercise to try to visualise one of your favourite scenes like this.