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Delphonse
Jun '16

I am working hard at learning storyboarding/layout but everywhere I look it does not seem to really give a lot of advice for how to storyboard properly or the steps to making them. My fiance does all my storyboards and I want to help remove some of that pressue by doing them as well. I mainly need practice in learning poses and basic drawing skills to create a decent roughdraft for my artists. I don't need to learn amazing art skill just enough to be able to express what I want in a layout. also dynamic angles and shots that makes the panels more intersting. so if anyone has any resources or places I can study this at that would be amazing!

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    Jun '16

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    Jun '16
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Kaykeactual fraggle
Jun '16

Well I've done some storyboarding for animation stuff and I was really nervous before doing my first one and I looked through a TON of boards at King of OOO13

But it sounds like you're worried about comic layout... which wouldn't be in storyboards so much as it would be in thumbnails. But honestly I can't think of any tutorials that are just for thumbnails. For that you should really be studying comic book page layouts since that's what the thumbnails would be mocking up. Picking up a Scott McCloud book (or three) would probably help. He covers layout, but also goes into visual storytelling and stuff too which is helpful. When it comes to comics, it's more than just poses and angles, the whole page is an organism and by choosing panel sizes and complexity you can completely change how someone reads your story.

Delphonse
Jun '16

Thanks I am new to all of it and not an artist so I have no clue where to start on that. my fiance does all the layouts I just write the script T.T I will check out those refrences though ^.^ I wanna be more productive since writing is easy and I have too much free time on my hands.

iddqd
Jun '16

Check out "Directing the story" by Francis Glebas.

alaingrey
Jun '16

If you want to get better at storyboarding, which in turn will help page layouts, a good exercise is to watch a film and draw sketches of the shots in a scene. See how it's established, what the camera does and how every shot is composed to give a feeling of mood and place. Some good films to try this with are Lawrence of Arabia or Bladerunner.

As for the page layouts themselves, that just happens over time as you figure out what you want on a page. Don't be afraid to see how much you can get across using a grid of panels- starting from a methodical layout can be a low pressure starting point.

KSlinger
Jun '16
1

Got to agree with @alaingrey, my best reference for storyboards is films. Watch as many as you can and really look things like where characters are stood relative to each other, how much of their bodies you can see, where the camera is shooting from, and how high or low the shot is and where the focus is being placed.

Films like:
The Grand Budapest Hotel2 - each shot is a work of art, pay attention to use of colour and character position
The Good The Bad And The Ugly- atmosphere, scale, suspense
The Birds- suspensful, tense, sense of impending doom and isolation
The Incredibles- incredible (eeey) use of space, pace, and angles to portray action
The Fifth Element2 - action and comedic timing combined, together with brilliant design and use of colour

Go forth and examine your favourite scenes. Pick apart why you like them so much. Chances are the directors have hit notes that resonate with you, be that stylistically, emotionally, visually, audibly, and have lead you to conclusions you enjoy.

EDIT: Also photography. Photographers and storyboard artists so the same thing. Examining their choices should give you answers and ideas on how to approach your own scenes.

shazzbaa
Jun '16

Are you practising right now? Because if you have scripts that your fiance is turning into storyboards/layouts, one way you could practice is by attempting to do layouts on those pages yourself, without looking at what your fiance is doing, and then going to compare yours to theirs after you're done.

This wouldn't be to remove pressure on your fiance, it would be to learn. You can look at the choices you made, and the choices your fiance made, and if they have time, your fiance can explain the choices they made to you -- "see how my version of the page is more intimidating because I chose this low shot?" It might help you start to learn more about how to approach laying out a page!

And while the recommendation to watch movies, pause them, and sketch out what you see is a really good one and a great way to learn composition (and can also help with learning poses btw!!), ultimately I gotta agree with @Kaykedrawsthings, the comic page is also going to require thinking about the composition of the page as a whole and how the panels flow into each other and stuff, not just the composition of each single shot.

If this is what you need, there are a lot of resources for drawing people and environments! You don't need to learn special Layout/Storyboard anatomy to learn basic anatomy; anything book or tutorial that will teach you basic drawing skills is useful in that regard :>

Shayanta
Jun '16
1

This might help a little. I found it while googling. Don't remember the website, though...