Working From News Items; Interpreting reality.
Creating extraordinary stories from ordinary materials.
Linear and Nonlinear Storytelling
An explanation of two types of storytelling.
Setting Limitations and Finding Liberation
Your personal experiences can be adapted to animation. If you haven’t got a life, why not create one?
Shopping for Story: Creating Lists
Use free association to create story ideas.
Nothing Is Normal: Researching Action
All Thumbs: Quick Sketch and Thumbnails
What a character designer should know.
Why caricature is better than literal interpretations of anything.
Past and Present: Researching Settings and Costumes
2 Vive la Difference! Animation and Live-action Storyboards
Comic Boards and Animation Boards
Comic strips also use storyboards, but they are dramatically different from animation boards.
Television Boards and Feature Boards
Television series boards differ from those for short and feature film boards. Why you should know this before you start your own project.
3 Putting Yourself Into Your Work
The Use of Symbolic Animals and Objects
Allegorical and cultural figures that carry meaning to your viewers. A short list for all you clever foxes.
The Newsman’s Guide: Who, What, When, Where, and Why
A series of exercises in character design.
4 Situation and Character-driven Stories
Clichés and how to avoid them or turn them on their heads. It’s not what you do, but how you do it.
You gotta do what you gotta do.
Summarize the story line before you start.
Tell your story with the most interesting characters. Avoid letting secondary characters and storylines become more interesting than your main story.
Parody satirizes a specific target, pastiche can reinvent an entire genre.
5 What If? Contrasting the Possible and the Fanciful
Beginning at the Ending: The Tex Avery “Twist”
Get your ending first, then work on the start.
Your animated universe may not obey the laws of the ‘real world,’ but it has to obey its own internal laws .
6 Appealing or Appalling? Beginning Character Design
Reading the Design: Silhouette Value
Create a good, simple, recognizable shape for each character that will render it instantly recognizable in a ‘lineup’.
Building a character.
Foundation Shapes and Their Meaning
How to design complex characters from simple shapes that you probably have lying around the house.
Designing characters that look alive by going with the design flow.
Creating Characters from Inanimate Objects
The only limit is your imagination.
Unifying the setting and character designs.
7 Size Matters: The Importance of Scale
A character’s scale can vary within itself or with its mood.
The villain is always larger than the hero, the hero is always well built and strong. As Sportin’ Life sang, “it ain’t necessarily so.”
Triple Trouble: Working with Similar Character Silhouettes
How do you tell the Three Little Pigs apart?
Going just a little too far, then pulling back.
8 Beauties and Beasts: Creating Character Contrasts in Design
The Great Dictator: Charlie Chaplin’s Character Acting
Chuck Jones told me: “Steal from the best.”
I Feel Pretty! Changing Standards of Beauty
What makes a character beautiful?
A Face That Only a Mother Could Love?
Facial shapes that suggest character traits.
Gods and Monsters: Contrasting Appearance and Personality
Why ugly is easier to portray than beauty.
9 Location, Location, Location: Art Direction and Storytelling
If these walls could talk, they’d be in an animated film! Using the setting to help set the story.
10 Starting Story Sketch: Compose Yourself
Compositional rules to remember.
Graphic shorthand and longhand and floor plans.
The Drama in the Drawings: Using Contrast to Direct the Eye
Every little movement has a meaning of its own.
Blocking animated scenes and sets.
Whose story is this? Everything depends on your point of view.
I’m Ready for My Close-up: Storyboard Cinematography
Cartoon characters have ‘good sides’ and ‘bad sides’.
12 Boarding Time: Getting With the Story Beat
Working to the Beat: Story Beats and Boards
Establishing the framework of the story.
Storytelling for animation is like making a speech.
13 The Big Picture: Creating Story Sequences
Panels and Papers: A Word about Storyboard Materials
More differences between television and feature-film boards.
Acting Out: Structuring Your Sequences
An illustration of a story that uses sequential structure.
A-B-C Sequences: Prioritizing the Action
Why B does not necessarily follow A in animation preproduction.
How and why a character changes and develops over the course of the film, and if not, why he should.
Sequences and characters in animated films all have names for identification purposes. Learn some of the funnier ones.
14 Patterns in Time: Pacing Action on Rough Boards
A story can be constructed like a really good roller-coaster ride.
15 Present Tense: Creating a Performance on Storyboard
I’ve got a song in my heart, and in my film.
So you thought I’d never get around to scripts? Yes, animated films DO use scripts…sometimes cruelly…
16 Diamond in the Rough Model Sheet : Refining Character Designs
Tying It Down: Standardizing Your Design
Turn your characters upside down and construct them from the inside out.
Your Cheatin’ Part: Nonliteral Design
Things are not always what they seem to be.
17 Color My World: Art Direction and Storytelling
Simple color analysis and color theory.
Saturation Point: Colors and Tonal Values
Why color is like grayscale, only more so.
Writing the Color: Color Scripts
The action, mood, and setting changes can be indicated by changing colors.
Researching illustrators and materials from different historical periods.
18 Show and Tell: Pitching Your Storyboards
The More Things Change: The Turnover Session
Utilizing and accepting suggestions for change.
19 Talking Pictures: Assembling a Story Reel or Animatic with a Scratch Track
This Is Only a Test: Refining Story Reels
Previewing and reviewing your story reels and animatics.
20 Build a Better Mouse: Creating Cleanup Model Sheets
Setting your characters’ final appearance
21 Maquette Simple: Modeling Characters in Three Dimensions
Sculpture can help refine the design
22 Am I Blue? Creating Character Through Color
Why ‘realistic’ color is only a relative concept.
It’s a Setup: Testing Your Color Models
Place the characters on the backgrounds to see if they get along well together.
23 Screen and Screen Again: Preparing for Production
Goodbye, Good Luck, and Have Fun!
24 Further Reading: Books, Discs, and Websites
25 Appendices: Animated Interviews
1: Discussion with A. Kendall O’Connor
2: Caricature Discussion with T. Hee
3: Interview with Ken Anderson