PQ Studio Tutorial - Character Development for Story boarding

www.phoenixquillstudio.com
This is a tutorial on how I develop basic character traits on drawn characters before I move onto developing the thumbnailed panels into story boards for film.

I have found that when you are making storyboards, you need some 'key traits' for each main character, so the readers are aware at a glance of who is doing what. "Give them an eyepatch and a limp", as Blake Snyder refers to it in "Save the Cat", his great book on screenwriting.

The risk of not doing this early is having to re-do the storyboards when people begin to complain they are getting lost. You need the reader to stay invested in the story and characters, not get distracted asking who is who. This is a tutorial on some of the tricks I use to take a basic character type, and attach some of those key traits for later reference during story boarding.

Thumbnailing won't ususally have a lot of detail, which is why they are called 'thumbnails', tiny, and quick to draw and redraw. The reason for doing this character development for thumbnails is not to make a perfect character model, but to lock in your main traits, so you can give the same couple of lines for the hairstyle for a character, or the same oversized head for another.

I hope you enjoy the video, and take a look at my others, and remember, everything was impossible before the first person did it.

Cheers!

David Jenkins

Phoenix Quill Studio.

Category:

Film & Animation

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• Screenplay
• Story
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• Thumbnail
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• concept
• art
• production
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• Previsualization
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