A lot has been written about the art of building dioramas but there is little out there on the art of telling a good story using the diorama as a medium.Good storytelling is essential to the success or failure of a storyboard diorama.While travelogues and documentaries are nice and can be very interesting,well written novels are usually the spice of life.Don't get me wrong I love writing and studying about history it helps us avoid the same mistakes in the future but a lot depends on who is writing that history,the winner or the loser ? How was it passed down through the generations ? word of mouth ? We all know of the problems there.We just tend to let our imaginations creep into our stories whether we like it or not.I kinda look at it this way.You are sitting in your car,lets call it "the now" you are looking out the front window,lets call that "the future".In your rear view mirror is "the past".You learn to avoid the potholes and other road hazards by not repeating the past.The trick is to avoid the potholes.Through our side windows life goes rushing by faster and faster with more and more distractions to attract out eyes from the road ahead.Take your eyes of the road for too long and *** your back to hitting those potholes again.It is all a matter of where you choose to put your attention.Artists tend to pay a lot of attention to "the now" it usually is the safest place for them to be.
Once Upon a time.........
My photobucket:
http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y250/JohnReid/
I am a man of few words but lots of pics
I quit drinking beer because the download was taking longer than the upload !
Storyboardig is more than taking a series of nice pictures and posting them on a wall.Your different scenes must be believable and your viewer must be able to identify with at least one of the characters being depicted.Ordinary characters doing ordinary things that the viewer can identify with is most important.Giving your characters human emotions by the use of dramatic lighting,posing and setting the stage for each and every shot can really add some drama to your work and make the whole experience much more interesting for your viewer. It is what I call keeping it in "the now".
Upshots and downshots and point of view.How to shoot it? angle of composition ,you get to choose the POV (point of view)The camera really represents us and our attention and to where it is directed.It is the heart of our indentification with the character.So "he matters" to the emotional involvement of the viewer.Upshots and downshots can also imply the relative size of the characters as well as the background.A floor can represent a downshot where a ceiling, ceiling would do the opposite.By manipulating the background we can control the POV.Decorating elements such as pictures on a wall ,lighting fixtures will also convey the same message.
Walt Disney: " at our studios we don't write our stories.we draw them"A storyboard artist is really a good storyteller.The drawings must have meaning and feelings behind them.They provide great way to begin to visualize the content of your story.The storyboard artist must be a great communicator of ideas and not necessarily a great illustrator or animator.Storyboards allow film makers to see a blueprint of their movie before even going into production.By tacking a sequence of images up on a wall you can visualize the entire story before eyes your eyes and study it for flow and continuity.It is a very effective and inexpensive way to develop a story.Boarding it up saves time and money.
simple comic book style of storyboarding
Storyboarding using pics
Along the rear wall of the engine shop the Camel wings are being crated for the trip to Hollywood.Originally it was planned to load everything on one truck with the wings being lashed to the fuselage sides but it looks now like another truck will have to be sent to pickup the wings and flight surfaces.
Along the engine shop wall sits an old air show car that was used for car/airplane races and ground to air wing walker transfers for many years.Sitting there in the weeds it seems to be have been forgotten,its glory days long gone by. The guys delivering the coal and wood would be glad to see it outta there to make their job easier.The boss however hates to throw anything away, so there it sits rusting away.
Sorry folks I got a bit ahead of myself on this storyboard walk around.This is the view through the backdoor,with the WC on the left and coal bin on the right(not visible in this pic).The boss is in conservation with two pilots ,one in flying gear and the other in RFC uniform. The boss in the fedora seems to be giving his best impression of Al Capone standing in the shadows of a early sunset on this November afternoon in Canada.(maybe a little rum across the border guys?) Please note: there is a more understandable sequence to this story in my photobucket under the My Book album.