Storyboard Template

Another choice when it comes to angles is also the question of, are you going to show an upshot? Where you don’t see the ground at all because you’re just looking up into the sky or are you going to show the down shot? And you not be asking yourself, okay, Sherm, what is it, which do I want to show? Well here’s a good part is you get to choose and the whole point to choosing, is that as long as you have good reason for what you’re going to be choosing. You’re probably going to be doing the right choice. Here is what I’m talking about. If every one of these choices has meaning behind it and usually it has to do with that camera being representing us and our attention. And so if you imagine that your story involves somebody walking up and looking of a tall building, that’s going to be part of the story. For example, let’s say this guy is fresh out of the sticks he’s and never been to New York City before. He’s looking up at giant building. Well that story is going to tell us something, that’s just going to, we’re probably going to want to draw something like this, which is from his vantage point or his P.O.V, which is his point of view. What point of view does is it’s really the heart of getting us as a viewer to identify with character, because if we identify with the character then what happens to the character on the screen is going to matter to us. And that again is just the heart of making that connection with the viewer. So this choice of angle and composition is really, really important for getting an emotional involvement with the viewer.

So again the beginning, when we’re talking about cutting, we’re talking about we need to choose what to shall and that’s pretty much just information. We haven’t decided yet how we’re going to show it, but an angle composition, we’re talking about now how to show it. And we’re getting more into the character of more into their point of view. For characters using up shots and down shots quite frequently if you have two different sized characters in a show. When they’re talking to each other, this character is generally going to be looking up at this character. And this character is generally going to looking down at this character. So frequently your characters are going to be drawn in up shots and slide down trust pending on their size. Well, a lot of people get really thrown when they try to draw up shots of characters. For example, they may try to draw the underside of her nose and have difficulty with the character’s features drawing from such an unusual angle, and for example you can see the ceiling and the walls of the room. And what I wanted to show you is that frequently, especially with animation. These kind of up shots can be done much more simply despite implying the upshot using the background. So if your character normally looks like this in a three-quarter view from straight on, just by adjusting the background a little bit and showing that same ceiling. You have a slight upshot, but without the weirdness that can come with trying to draw on upshot, a character that hasn’t really been designed for that.

So this right here is something that could save you quite a lot of time and trouble because generally you’re not going to have that kind of extreme angle where this one will read just the same. The same will follow for another character if you’re working in a down shot. If you have a little character like a mouse, very frequently you’re going to be looking way down on them, well you could spend a lot of time trying to figure out what he looks like from that position, but he’s going to look probably pretty weird and pretty off model. So again, it’s just as easy, and you’ll see this in a lot of kind of cartoons that have these sort of characters that you can just draw that same character from more of a standard point of view, but still show the floor to represent a down shot. This is a total miracle when it comes to trying to draw characters on model. I’ve just seen so many people struggle and struggle with this, because most model sheets that animation will show you is going to show characters from pretty much a straight on view, but in 360 degrees. Again even if you’re work on live-action. These kind of shots could be very difficult to draw. Drawing up shots on characters and down shots tend to be a lot more challenging and if you’re wanting to just get a convincing shot that reads very clearly, you can just use this technique of manipulating the background.

So again that is for down shots and up shots and again this has to do with who’s mind it is that we’re getting into. So when we see this sort of shot, the viewers aren’t thinking about it very much, but they are going to get the feeling subliminally that they’re looking from a low point of view, because we can see that ceiling. You might even put a little, it might be a little lamp up there. There might be other background elements, like a picture frame or maybe a lamp on a table. Regarding composition, I would also stress that other decorative elements like that when put into a background are there to still support the scene, background design is one of many things that you’re going to have to deal with and an artist that draws flat or unconvincing or cluttered backgrounds are just going to have a difficult time getting people who like their work. So this is kind of arrangement of background details that you would want to have. And even if you really look at the schematic of this room and you thought oh no you know what that light, that light should really be here and there’s a chain hanging down like right there. Well these kind of elements start touching and tangent against the main character will really start to distract the viewer and they are totally distracting. And we’ll talk about this other topic of tangents.