Why I chose this role:
I chose I wanted a role as a Storyboard artist as I have considering it as a career path recently, so I need an opportunity to practice and see how much I actually like it. I did a lot of storyboarding for Part 1 of this project, and for PAFS1 Unit 4 Animation project, and I have definitely improved since then. Also, during our first group meeting a few of the girls said they had never done storyboarding before, so they would rather it be someone that has experience in it. Lastly, a requirement of the Storyboard Artist was to write the storyline too, I love creative writing so I was really looking forward to that.
Plan as a Storyboard Artist:
Planning ahead, I’ve learnt from previous experience the best ways to produce a storyboard, in a shorter amount of time.
The plan Laura and I came up with is to get the Story Written up first, and have a final draft completed before starting any storyboards. We will then send the story back and forth to the group members to check they like the idea so everyone feels included in the storyline. Once we have our final draft, we plan to match up the story with the song lyrics, to work out the specific timings. We will then split the story in half, and draw the boards for that section of story so we have an equal amount to work from. We will design the environments as we are completing the storyboards, and we will update them as we go.
Final Boards in Presentation
Process
We began the storyboarding process by looking at the requirements of that role, and referring to the department checklist. We would update the checklist as we went along in case we thought of extra work we could do.
Collecting Group Story Ideas:
Our first step was collecting everyone’s story ideas and trying to piece them together to create one cohesive story that included as many ideas as we could. Coming up with individual story pitches was the first main task everyone had to do. They could present it in any way they wanted to. I wrote up everyone’s ideas and asked them to send me any visuals they had so Laura and I could refer back to it throughout the story writing process.
Below is a more in depth document of my story pitch I put together to show the group. From the start I wanted to include some kind of transition to a strange alternate world, and to enhance this feeling by starting off the experience in a real life setting. I also wanted to assess the song lyrics very closely, and try to take as many characters or locations from it by picking it apart.
Combining the Group Ideas:
Once we had all of the group story ideas, Laura and I started to work out how we would bring them all together to create a successful story. We looked at each idea, releasing a lot of us had very similar ideas, meaning it was much easier to combine them. From each idea we pulled concepts and visual inspirations such as artwork by Edvard Munch, George Orwells 1984, Todd Brownings “Freaks”, Glam Rock era, 1970s Manhattan, art by Escher and artwork by Guy Peelleart. All of these inspirations came from researching into Bowie and his inspirations for Diamond Dogs.
Laura and I also did a breakdown of the song lyrics to help us create the story. From the songs lyrics we took characters Diamond Dogs, The Freaks, Halloween Jack, the lady with a Dali Brooch and a little black cat (cool cat) that lives on Manhattan Chase. We also pulled locations from the script including the 70s rock bar (“the latest party”) and Manhattan Chase (in reference to Chase Bank, Manhattan in the song).
We also turned the line “Come out of the garden baby, you’ll catch your death in the fog”, as a prompt to keep the VR story and events going in time with the music and lyrics. We took that line from the song literally, meaning when fog appears in the story, death and danger is coming along with the Diamond Dogs. The Diamond Dogs are a government group, watching everyone constantly and taking away their identities (1984, Big Brother).
Our Song lyrics breakdown paired with everyone’s ideas formed our final story. However, to ensure everyone was definitely happy, we sent the story back and forth to the group so they had the opportunity to add anything if they wanted to.
Storyboard Timings:
The final story went back and fourth more times than we initially planned, which pushed back our schedule slightly, but we wanted everyone to be happy! In the end we had the final story and breakdown written out in two days which isn’t too bad! After a total of 5 hours in teams calls writing the story, Laura and I were eager to get started on the drawings.
In a word document, we had our Final Story and the Song Lyrics to Diamond Dogs open next to eachother. We then listened to the song, and matched up the song lyrics and timings to the appropriate places in the story. For example…
– “This ain’t rock’n’roll, this is genocide” – Bowies Freak Band shouting the intro to the song before they perform
– “Todd Browning’s freak you was” – You realise you’re one of the Freaks, as they’re helping you escape from the Diamond Dogs
– “Come out of the garden, baby, You’ll catch your death in the fog” – This is a recurring prompt, the scene fills with fog and The Diamond Dogs come
– “The Halloween Jack is a real cool cat, And he lives on top of Manhattan Chase” – You enter a door onto Manhattan Chase, the door turns into a broken elevator, you have to zipline off the building “onto the street below”
“Her face is sans feature, but she wears a Dali brooch” – You approach a lady wearing a Dali Brooch. Her face is Sans feature, Sans means without feature, her face gets taken by the Diamond Dogs
We matched up the story and the lyrics by colour coding each verse of the song. Once this was done, we split the story in half, I took the first half, Laura took the second half and we had to do at least 12 boards each so we would have at least 24 boards by the end of the project.
Drawing the boards:
Once we knew who was doing what boards, we could do a lot of the work individually. However, we would both still check up on eachother with any updates on story or change in style.
We decided early on that we wouldn’t stick to a particular storyboarding style. We thought it would be interesting to do it in our own style and see how they fit together in the end. It was risky, but it definitely worked out well. We both agreed we wanted a grungey kind of style to the boards, but didn’t go into specifics so we weren’t restricted too much.
Our boards in the end matched up really well I did mine very saturated and dull in colour, whereas Lauras boards seemed to get more colourful as the story went on, then abruptly went back to black and white when the VR experience ended. We decided this was aa good way of showing as the viewer gets closer to the escape, the more colourful the boards get. When they realise it was all a trap, things abruptly go back to black and white, signifying they’ve done one big loop, and it’s now game over.
As Laura and I were both designing the environment too, we split those in the same way as the boards. I had all of the sets in the first section, Laura in the second.
My Final Storyboards
My First Storyboard Draft
Reflections
Initially we planned for there to be just one Storyboard Artist, then multiple Assistants. We realised that the work load of the Storyboard Artist would be too much for one person, and that it would be a good idea for two people to take on the role and divide the work. Having two people would also allow for more creativity and ideas when writing the storyline as two brains are better than one!
Yuxin and Odile volunteered to be Storyboard Assistants initially, but due to their busy schedules we realised they had more Costume work than we thought. In the end their role was changed to Costume and Character designer, rather than Costume and Storyboard Assistant. This allowed them more time to focus on their characters which they seemed to be enjoying.
Our Storyboards and Story writing process took longer than we initially planned. It made us a bit stressed at first as we were unsure we would get it all done, there was also a lot of pressure to send out the Final Story Draft for everyone quickly so they had written material to work from. We got everything done in good time in the end though and were both pleased with out results.