| Back to Expert CornerConsolidate Your Pipeline!
A live action storyboard artist goes through hell and back to make a scene not just work, but amplify its concept. He/she must appease the director, writer, producers, DP, clients, investors, and so on. This is why I have always tried to make my workflow as efficient as possible, and spend more time on “plus-ing” or improving a scene. Naturally I sought after the digital approach, using several applications to get my boards from a rough drawing to a sleek animatic. Then…through the frustration and chaos of all of the misnamed, dislocated mish mashed files and dozens of expensive applications, rises the Holy Grail of dedicated pipeline software; Toon Boom Storyboard Pro!!
Artists, directors; listen up! If you want to get your pre-production and principle shooting moving like it should, you need to consolidate your resources into one simple, manageable tool. I have been able to limit my tools to just my Mac, my tablet and Storyboard Pro.
The storyboards that you see here, I drew for Jim Eckhart’s live action feature “To Be Friends”. I discovered Storyboard Pro towards the beginning of the film’s pre-production and made the switch easily, with it’s easy-to-learn functions, without losing a day’s work. Immediately, I was able to make clear, attractive beat boards for Jim to show the investors of the film. All of the strokes I created were vectorized, allowing me to select unnecessary lines and delete them, all the while utilizing the separate drawing layers.
One of the greatest advantages I had to offer directors and clients was a clear animatic that I could create in Storyboard Pro; with camera moves, transitions and all of the dialogue and script notes on the side.
Think about it. You’re pitching your most recent boards. Your director wants to see a couple boards juxtaposed, just to see how the shot sequence plays out. If you’re playing an exported movie of the animatic, what are you going to do…edit the video? No, no. Takes too much valuable time from the crew sitting and watching you, drinking up their bottled water to pass the time. In Storyboard Pro, simply click and drag the images on your timeline to rearrange your boards. BAM! Right back into pitching.
Another impressive feature of the software is its integrative ability to other programs that you use in your pipeline. Import your script from Final Draft into the dialogue and action notes directly to your panels in Storyboard Pro. The program can also export a Final Cut file of your timed animatic to play and manipulate with in Final Cut! Let me paint another picture for you, directors. You’re in principle shooting stage and you just imported some footage you seem pretty confident about. You can put that footage into that same file in Final Cut with all of your panels timed-out and you can see an up-to-date animatic of your sequence’s shot continuity. Keep replacing the panels with more footage as you shoot. Likewise, import still images from the film into panels in Storyboard Pro to check your shot continuity.
“Yeah, that’s nice Sean. But what about us low-budget filmmakers? How is this a tantalizing and wise investment for us?”
I’m glad you asked me! How many applications do you purchase to get clear digital boards? Let’s see: a good drawing program, an image editing program to crop and resize the panels, a file management program to automatically sequentially number the panels because you gave your in-between boards weird decimal numbers like “45.8a”, and overkill video editing program to time and export your animatic. Sounds to me like you need a little simplicity. The time you save alone would be worth purchasing a piece of software that does it all. Also consider that any changes you make in your boards (which will happen more times than you care to admit) would cause you to take all of those steps repeatedly, hoping that you didn’t goof-up the files on the way. I draw with a Cintiq and I love my baby. It allows me to physically swivel my drawing area around to get my most efficient drawing experience. Every draftsperson knows that there is only one range of motion to draw strong lines with, and they move their paper accordingly to achieve it. Guess what low-budget filmmakers, you don’t need a fancy drawing screen tablet to do so. Storyboard Pro has two hotkeys that rotate the panel you’re drawing in angled increments, in either a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion. Toom Boom is already integrated with and backed by the largest names in hardware and software development for film. I’ve always strived to stay ahead of the curve and use the best tools offered to make my work rise above the rest. My friends and colleagues can attest to this. Use Storyboard Pro to save time and money.
Biography
Sean Petrilak is an emerging artist, with experience to work in several industry markets. Before Sean received his BFA in Animation and Illustration from San Jose State, he was training and working with Electronic Arts on video game titles such as Dead Space and The Godfather Part II. In addition to that pre-graduate work, he storyboarded on live action published shorts and won several film competitions during his time in San Jose.
Loving all aspects of film and entertainment, Sean continued to expand his craft to storyboarding web animation with Jib Jab, product design, album and movie poster illustration, after becoming an award-winning illustrator for his work on QD3’s documentary Concrete Jungle.
Sean is working on an animated feature in 2009, which hasn’t been announced yet. He continues to work digitally, like he always has.
