"Regular Show" Storyboard Revisionist Test

A few months ago I got the opportunity to do a storyboard revisionist test for Cartoon Network's "Regular Show." A storyboard revisionist, for those of you who don't know, is responsible for cleaning-up the storyboard artists' drawing and preparing them for the animators in Korea. Revisionists also storyboard new scenes or sequences the producers deem necessary for the episode to truly work.

Being a huge "Regular Show" fan, this was an incredible opportunity and I had an absolute blast putting it together. I've been told my submission made it to the final round of consideration, which I can assure you, is the nicest rejection I have ever received.

Thumbnails

The first part of the test was the thumbnail section. I was given a brief paragraph that described the basic outline of the scene and I was charged with writing the dialogue and staging the action in 40 panels or less.

Scribd Link

Thumbnails are a little rougher than storyboards and are more about getting the basic pacing and staging down.

Cleaned-Up Storyboards

After the thumbnails, I was asked to provide 10 cleaned-up storyboard panels, much as I would do as a real storyboard revisionist.

Scribd Link

There was also a written test, which I'm declining to post in respect to Cartoon Network and "Regular Show." I was entrusted with this material, and I don't want to give it all away. Where's the fun in that?

I'll do another post in the future where I talk a little bit more about the process of putting the test together. I figure it might be useful advice for anybody doing a test like this.

All in all the whole test was a fantastic experience and I'm absurdly lucky that I even got the opportunity. I want to thank Brooke Keesling, Marcy Mahoney and everyone who looked at my test for all their help and guidance.

 I'm posting this on the permission of Cartoon Network. If, for any reason, Cartoon Network or other "Regular Show" employees want me to take this down, please let me know.

"Regular Show" is copyright Cartoon Network.

Sketching

Every once in a while I start to feel guilty that I don't do enough to vary up how I draw characters and I get really paranoid about my abilities. So the other day I sat down and drew a whole bunch of people, trying to vary shape and size as much as I could and be loose as possible.

It was a nice break from writing and animating and it reminded of the simple joys of the line.

My Name is Barnabas Collins...

In honor of the Tim Burton's"Dark Shadows" the folks at Deviantart decided to hold a contest for the best portrait of Barnabas Collins, the vampire famously played by Jonathan Frid and now Johnny Depp. As fun as that might be, the real kicker was that the top ten entries were going to be judged by Tim Burton himself.

Here's my entry.

I've been a Tim Burton fan for a long time so there was no way I was going to pass this up. Unfortunately, I found out about the contest three days before it was over, so I had to work fast. My initial concept was a traditional three-quarters portrait of Barnabas in a stiff and elegant pose. To contrast this sophistication, I was going to paint blood splatters all over the painting, implying that Barnabas had killed someone and the victim's blood got all over his fancy portrait. How annoying!

As I was sketching this concept an idea came to me of Barnabas staring straight at the viewer while in the background there was a mixture of crazy '70s colors. I really enjoyed the pop-weirdness of the "Dark Shadows" trailer so I decided that was the way to go.

For reference I primarily used these two photos that Warner Brothers provided in the contest kit:

(these two images are copyright Warner Brothers 2012)

I tried to mix and match elements from both Barnabas in creating my own. And in case you're wondering, I started from scratch. There's no copying or tracing to create my final image.

Here's mine right after inking:

I've been playing a lot with line width recently and I think that really helped out the artwork, especially in differentiating the various layers of clothing.

Here's the final line art. I went in and fixed any areas that needed fixing and eliminated dirt. The biggest change was increasing the size of the cane. The initial version was far too small, so I had to go in and scale it up. I also fixed Barnabas's eyes. Minor stuff but it all adds up.

I also used the flip test and found out the illustration was skewed too far to the left. Using Free Transformation - Skew I was able to make it look perfect. Now, color!

Color turned out to be trickier than I expected. The only idea I had was "70s Colors!" But what did that look like? This wasn't it.

 

 Neither was this.

Nor this.

In a fit of desperation, I started looking at 70s movie posters on Google Image Search and find these:

 

Yes, that's right, "The Holy Mountain."

The colors on these two posters were fantastic! I straight up copied the colors directly into Photoshop and created this:

Almost there! I played around with hue and saturation and pumped up the colors even more:

And there you go! The finished piece.

Alas I didn't make it to the semi-finals (these talented folks did instead) but I had a great time doing it. I'm very proud of the final image and I think it might be the most technically polished thing I've done so far. That alone made the competition worth it.

See you in the theaters on May 11th!

Many, Many Monsters

Hey folks, sorry for not posting much. Life's been throwing a lot of stuff at me and the minute one thing ends, another begins. Thankfully it's all very exciting stuff that I hope I can talk about soon.

But I haven't been completely neglectful. For the past few months I've been running, Many, Many Monsters, a blog dedicated to publishing my monster art.

The whole thing is an opportunity to try out new techniques, play around with photoshop and plumb the depths of my mind. I try to get them done a fast as I can; I really want them to come straight from my subconscious without too much intellectualizing. Because of that I've posted some truly strange stuff that occasionally makes me ask, "Where the hell did that come from?"

Here are some miscellaneous favorites:

Nicola

Stompasaur

Scratch

Joe the Monster Bartender

The Debt Collector

If you like 'em, check out more at Many, Many Monsters. If you're hipper than I am, you can see them at my Tumblr.

The Happiest Place on Pandora!

Yep, there will now be an "Avatarland" at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. As a Disney Theme Parks fan and James Cameron fan this news couldn't be any more perfect.

But even better than that have been the reactions across the Disney fan sites. Oh my God, they've been so much fun to read.

Bring on 2016.

"Super" Violence

SPOILERS APLENTY!

I was watching James Gunn’s Super the other day and I had a great time. I thought it was a very funny and very dark take on super heroes and super hero fans. One thing I noticed while reading reviews and reactions from people on the net was that they were very put off by the violence. Gunn's cavalcade of carnage really seemed to really disturb some people.

I found this interesting because all the violence in Super struck me as very over-the-top and silly. Whenever Rainn Wilson as the Crimson Bolt hit someone on the head with a wrench, the person didn’t just get a bump on the noggin, their skull cracked open. Characters don’t just get shot, they all get shot in the head so the maximum amount of blood can spurt out. At one point Wilson drops a cinderblock on a prostitute.

Now, that might not seem funny until you see the movie. The way that joke is set up it looks like a frame from a Looney Tunes cartoon, and with that in mind, it’s not hard to picture Bugs Bunny holding the cinderblock right over Elmer Fudd’s giant head.

So violence is very comic in the world of Super. James Gunn is a veteran of Troma, and that gleeful love of carnage is very evident throughout the movie. There’s a scene near the end where Ellen Page gets shot in the head, and rather than tastefully suggest the damage, Gunn decides to show all gore, which includes half of Page’s head blown away.

That shot always gets a reaction from people because cute little Ellen Page now has half a head. But while I thought it was sad that her character died (and her character is a highlight of the film), I also thought it was pretty funny. The violence in this situation struck me as so crazy and so excessive that the only reaction was to laugh.

As I mentioned before though, most people seemed to be really apalled by the shot. I suppose the easy answer is to say I’m jaded and sick or that the audiences were just a bunch of wimps. But I think the real reason for this disparity is the film's tone. People seemed to take the story a little more seriously than I did.

James Gunn mentioned on his Formspring account that he always saw the film as more sad than funny and that a lot of people agreed with this view. I can definitely see that interpretation as the film treats its characters very sincerely and Wilson’s craziness can read as real to a lot of people.

That’s not how I saw it though, as Super appeared to me a little more overtly comedic. Wilson is such a sad sack that he states early in the movie that he’s only had two happy memories in his entire life. Kevin Bacon gives his most William Fichtner-esque performance as a mob boss that has a thing for brown eggs. There are a number of sequences inside Wilson’s mind that are incredibly bizarre, including tentacles opening Wilson’s head and a dipping a corn dog into his brain. Ellen Page in particular epitomizes the film’s tone as she’s a super hero-wannabe that just wants to abuse people. She’s a psychopath that thinks she’s awesome. She’s violent, sad and funny.

For me, Super was an arch and darkly humorous satire of super heroism. Others saw it more as Taxi Driver-type character study of a sad individual in the grips of mental-depression (the film’s ending is definitely Taxi Driver homage). Neither view is necessarily correct, but it does explain the reaction to all the violence. I think the film’s a big joke so the violence to me is intentionally stylized and ridiculous. If you see the film as a drama and are deeply invested in the characters, then all the violence that the Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page dish out and take in will be deeply disturbing.

Tone is something of a nebulous concept as you can’t just type “darkly comic” or “depressing” into Final Draft Pro, but it is an important aspect of film that can change how the viewer interprets the film. If Gunn set out to make a sad film, am I wrong for seeing Super as comic?

Yes.

No, wait! I’m not, because you can’t control how everyone interprets your film. But that’s OK, because if you’ve made a good film, then it can be appreciated for reasons you didn’t necessarily intend. I mean, shit, you think anybody’s interpreting Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star?

So if you ever watch “Super” with me, don’t be freaked out when I laugh at Sean Gunn getting his legs broke by Ellen Page ramming into him with her car. I think it’s supposed to be funny!

Development Sketches

 

Here are some sketches I did for an unproduced short film. I had a lot of fun developing the relationship between the girl and her cat, and the short was going to be fairly experimental (I was watching a lot of David Lynch films at the time). Unfortunately my passion for the project ran out right around the storyboard stage, so the short remains unfinished.

For now anyway.