KEY
What I'm calling the layout "keys" are the drawings that match the storyboard expressions. These drawings, as I explained in my last post, are tricky to do and are just translations of the previous artists' storyboard poses.I have a main rule in my cartoons and that is for each successive stage of the production to build on the previous stage.
The storyboard artist tells the points of the story outline....then pluses them...but he doesn't ignore the points or tone them down, or rewrite the story. He tells the main points, then adds details, gags and dialogue - all in context of the storyline.
The layout artist then takes the storyboard artists' key poses and stages and makes them stronger (but doesn't throw them all out and start from scratch).
Then he adds more poses and expressions to color the scenes and make the story points, gags and acting stronger.
In most studios, each of the creative stages of a cartoon tones down the previous stage until the final film is a very bland literal conception of the written story, that doesn't even make the story points clear, let alone emphasize them.
To me, the story is just the beginning of the fun, but it is important and everyone working on the film must understand what it's about and what each successive point and gag means.
You need to believe the story and the characters and know the hierarchy of ideas and what to stress in order to make the audience understand and enjoy the story.
I've worked at studios where the artists didn't know the story at all, and didn't even have a complete copy of the storyboard to work from. They never knew the meanings of their scenes or the context of them within the overall story. They had no idea what to stress and were told not to stress anything anyway. Just trace the model sheets and don't worry about the performance. Crazy. But that explains a lot of modern cartoons.
My layout artists have to do more drawings than the storyboard poses. I don't want them to throw out or tone down the SB poses, but that's not where the creative part for the pose artist comes in. The fun part is creating the extra poses that link the main ones, or accent them, or color the overall scene.
The sb keys are the jumping off point for the layout artists, but there is plenty of room left to be creative in between the main poses.
these are connecting links between the main expressions and poses. This scene only had a couple of breakdown poses. I'm showing you a simple scene to get the idea across.
KEY
Next post, I'll show you breakdowns using dialogue mouths and expressions that really help act and color the scenes.
Dialogue does not just happen in your mouth. But mouth shapes are a big part of acting. You'll see.
