Sunday, July 01, 2012

Story/Gag Workshop at TAAFI (TORONTO) on Sunday July 8 2012






STORY WORKSHOP 1:30 PM

HOW TO DRAW STORIES FOR CARTOONS
The folks at the Toronto animation festival came up with a unique workshop idea and asked me to demonstrate the way I write the stories for my cartoons.


As most people who've read the blog know, I don't use scripts; I use the classic cartoon method of writing the details of the story with drawings on storyboards. My writers are all cartoonists and animators. Of course, not all cartoonists have story ability but the ones who do write the best cartoons because they understand what works when you have to draw every frame of the story.

Mike Kerr, one of my funniest story partners will be joining me on stage to conduct a "gag session".

AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION
We'll want to involve some of the artists in the audience and have you suggest gags and draw them out on storyboards which we will pin up and review and add to.

Their may be around 80 people in the audience, so I wouldn't be able to personally spend time withe every artist, so I'm trying to figure out a way in advance to maybe see some of your work and select a few funny cartoonists.

I will do another post with some links to storyboards I've done and character designs and descriptions.

CAN YOU DRAW FUNNY? APPLY NOW
In the meantime if you'd like to participate in the event, you might get used to drawing some of my characters. (They don't have to be perfectly on model, but the drawings should feel like the characters and express their personalities).

The characters I am thinking of using are Slab N Ernie, Bobby Bigloaf, maybe George Liquor, Sody Pop and The Heartaches.



Maybe we can get 2 or 3 cartoonist units together and each unit can storyboard a section of a different story.


If you wanna do some sketches and upload them to a blog or web site to show, put an (active) link in the comments to this post. If I think you have story potential, I may select you and give you a heads up on a rough story idea to start sketching up. Or if you already are familiar with my characters, you can suggest your own story or gag idea. - REMEMBER - DO IT WITH DRAWINGS, NOT JUST TEXT.

CLICK THE LABELS BELOW

TO FIND POSTS ABOUT THE CHARACTERS AND THE PROCESS