Terry Gilliam on the Importance and Power of Storyboarding

No Film School has an old article featuring old yet interesting series of interviews with animator and director Terry Gilliam (Monty Python, Baron Munchausen, The Brothers Grimm, Time Bandits) about storyboarding.

From the article:

Gilliam says something interesting immediately, and that is his use of drawing sometimes duringthe writing phase. Storyboards in a strict sense are traditionally done once a script has reached a certain plateau of finality — meaning it may not be locked outright, but only relatively minor alterations will be made in subsequent drafts. Gilliam here describes his storyboarding process sometimes affecting the script as new visual ideas come out, which is an interesting inversion of convention as I see it. He highlights the benefit of using storyboards as the skeletal basis of a scene’s structure, allowing out-of-sequence shooting to work just as well as shooting in-sequence — with some creative variability for how to achieve each frame still retained by the shooting process itself. On the other hand, Gilliam says that storyboarding improves the worst-case creative-scenario, which is running dry on ideas — because even without the in-the-moment idea on set, adhering to pre-conceived storyboards while shooting will still result in a cohesive, coherent sequence.

Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj7P1sczHZo

Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtJ5N93Sw8Q

 

The History of Animation pegs in the USA

new-pegbar-chart-17_acme-1024x817

Print Magazine Online has a fascinating article about the history of the animation pegbar complied by the very famous animator J.J. Sedelmaier who’s animated many many of your favorite classic cereal commercials as well as the season premiere of Beavis and Butthead. We interviewed Mr. Sedelmaier a few years ago so you can check that out too here, if you like. Anyway if you’re an animation history nut, you won’t want to miss this!
From the article:

The drawing/image registration process is a fundamental aspect of film animation. If the images that are animated don’t have a shared foundation with each other, the movement that’s created by the animator has no common relationship with the background or the viewer’s point of view—it just doesn’t work. It was John Randolph Bray who established and patented the peg system of registration in 1915. For almost a century, folks working in animation production have used paper, pencils, various designs of lightboxes, and pegged drawing discs to do their craft, and within this world of registration there were several standards. In New York there were pegs by Acme (a small round hole with two thin slots on either side), Oxberry (a small center hole with wider slots on either side), Signal Corps (close to Oxberry but closer to three round holes) and Fleischer/Famous/Terrytoons (three round holes). California/Hollywood seemed to hover in the world of Acme, but Disney (which switched over to Acme 20 years ago) had paper that was also punched with two sets of holes—one for the animator and one for the Ink and Paint Department. This allowed for less stress/damage on the holes and thus better registration. It’s only been within the past decade that this conventional process and this sort of equipment has proven to be on its way out.

You can read the entire article here.

The Minimalist Animation of ‘Archer’

1027736-archerarticle0004layercomp5-1200

AWN has an interesting article about my favorite prime time show Archer on FX and highlights their production pipeline as well which is rare for even for an animation interview. Producer Neil Holman and art director Chad Hurd detail the limited but highly stylized animation techniques they wield to devastatingly hilarious effect on their hit FX animated series.

CH: Yeah, well one big new thing that we’re using now is Toon Boom Harmony, which is kind of like a super fancy Flash that’s made for animating. It’s a lot more traditional and we’ve been using this a lot more with our rigs. Anything that you see that has a lot of movement, usually our action scenes, like when we do a big spin kick, that’s done in Harmony. We’ve been using that a good bit more this season. You’re going to see a lot of fun action scenes.

1027736-archerarticle0000layercomp1-1200

You can read the entire AWN article on Archer’s pipeline process here.

“Dogtor” by Rhea Dadoo

A cute and realistically acted piece from second year film student Rhea Dadoo at CalArts.

It’s about friendship and reflecting on personal journeys–also dogs! Making this film definitely got me out of my comfort zone and proved to be a great learning experience! Thank you to faculty and classmates for all your guidance and support–couldn’t have done it without you!

DreamWorks Animation Will Stay in Glendale

Mandatory Credit: Photo by James Shaw/REX/Shutterstock (5610023w) Jeffrey Katzenberg 'Kung Fu Panda 3' film premiere, London, Britain - 06 Mar 2016

Mandatory Credit: Photo by James Shaw/REX/Shutterstock (5610023w)
Jeffrey Katzenberg
‘Kung Fu Panda 3’ film premiere, London, Britain – 06 Mar 2016

Variety is reporting that DreamWorks Animation Will Stay in Glendale as a great sigh of relief can be heard from their campus.

From their article:

Comcast leaders Brian Roberts and Steve Burke have offered reassurances to DreamWorks Animation staffers that they plan to keep making movies at the DreamWorks’ Glendale headquarters.

The duo made the promises in a Tuesday morning meeting with over 1,000 staffers in Glendale, five days after Comcast announced it was buying the animation company for $3.8 billion.

“This came together really fast, but has been in our hearts for a long time,” Comcast CEO Roberts said following opening remarks by DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. “We will absolutely continue to make animated films here. Today for me, Jeffrey, it’s the awesome responsibly of trying to find a way to take your dream and try to carry on your legacy and celebrate it in a way that will make you proud.”

You can read the entire article on DreamWorks staying in Glendale here.