HELPING OUT MY FELLOW STORYBOARD ARTIST

I am a day late, friends, so please forgive me. My weekend got ahead of me and so the blog is late. No, I was not partying.  Today, I turned yet another year older than forty, and so I do not waste time being Chris Rock’s “old man in the club”.

My friend Todd Harris, is a talented storyboard artist in his own right, who has helped me in the past with jobs that were a little too big with time-frames that were a little too short.

Times have changed, and so my younger friend (he had the nerve to only turn thirty days ago) is quite in demand as a board guy and so I helped him with some overflow.

Unlike other jobs categories, storyboard artists – like comic book artists – can have too much work and get aid in the hopefully equally talented hands of their friends. When a director needs work done, they don’t care how you get it done, only that it get’s done.

What we usually do is to lay out the pages to be done, so that we are secure that the storytelling will remain true to the project and that the style somewhat (hopefully closely) resembles your own.

You don’t want Janet Jackson filling in for Chaka Khan as the styles will not mesh.  Todd is a clear and dynamic storyteller who does not overstuff his frames with needless details and neither do I.

I am reminded of Vince Vaughn is SWINGERS, as he screams with pride, “My little boy’s all growed up!!” 

And so, Todd emails me JPEGS of his sketches. Had he sent PSD’S (Photoshop documents with “un-flattened” layers, the files would be huge. After Todd explains the scene to me, as well as the characters, I get to work. 

I create a duplicate layer of his work in Photoshop (making two layers). Then I erase the contents of the original layer, leaving a white background layer (still two layers). I then decrease opacity of the top layer and then create a new layer that I can draw over his sketches, while seeing my own. That’s three layers.

As Todd’s rough sketches had little detail, my initial layer will be used to flesh out the shapes and figures. After I make sure what is what, I do a “finish” layer which will be comprised of clean lines. Fourth layer.

An added touch is a layer of grays for a little added polish. Fifth layer.  After I erase all of the unwanted layers (leaving the “finish” and “gray” layers, I “Flatten” the art back to one layer.

Seven pages and I was done.  Todd used to come over to my house and draw past midnight sometimes, or take them to his home and crank them out.

It was an interesting bit of a turn-a-bout to help him. Worked out well.

Hopefully now he won’t go all Anakin Skywalker and try to kill his mentor.

“Kids”. Can’t live with ‘im, can’t …