Up to my neck

Last push for my story final! Ahhh! I'm screwed! Story is such an engulfing process. It's overwhelming and rewarding. But mostly overwhelming. Hahah! I'm drowning in board work right now.


Layering in PS (for reusability)

I'm doing the backgrounds on a seperate layer in PS so I can recycle shots. The two above are the same bg.
This is a traditional method updated with the use of PS. You could get a similar result without a computer by drawing the bg on one sheet and drawing your character acting on an overlay sheet then cutting your characters out (leaving a little white edge to give the characters some breathing room on the board) and taping them to the bg. Then photocopy and viola! finished board now you can add some tone.

In the images below you can see a finished background with roughed in characters. I will next clean-up the characters (for better readability) like the first image in this post.

With this process it's easy to drop new drawings onto an existing background, thus cutting down on drawing time.


Thumbnailing
Probably one the most important ingredients for me in boarding are thumbnails. Quick little ideas that need not be pretty and shouldn't be, in order to facilitate quick jotting of ideas. It's really easy to get bogged down in choices. Things like acting, camera placement, continuity of story can all become too much if I don't break them down in this thumbnailing phase. Thumbnails apply to just about any artistic medium. When you paint, illustrate even writing a story requires seeing a larger whole which is in a sense thumbnailing.