Post by BYWInsaniac on May 20, 2015 2:36:19 GMT -5
Hey all!
I've been floating around these forums since probably 1999. Way back then I was in 8th grade, 13 years old, and posting at JC.
Now I'm living on my own, 29 years old, and I've been working in animation. I've been working on Nickelodeon's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" series for just about 2 years now, currently as a storyboard artist.
I know I mentioned what I do in a post some time last year, but there's a crazy delay in animation: the stuff I'm storyboarding right now won't air for about 1 year. Yeah, I've got to keep my mouth shut about the scenes I'm working on for an entire year!!! So at that time I couldn't really talk about what I'd done, let alone show anything!
But now that it's been two full years, a lot of episodes that I've worked on have aired, and I wanted to share a few links and describe what I do a little bit.
So currently I'm a storyboard artist. We are the first people to visualize a scene. I literally take the script and I draw out the shots and the characters the way I think the scene should play out. We impact how comedic, how intense, or how exciting the scene is by our choices in camera angles, pacing, and character acting.
Once I finish a storyboard it goes to the director and the producers, and they'll make changes if needed. If I've done a good job, the only changes will be little things. Things like trimming the episode down so it's 21 minutes long, or tweaking things so everything hooks up between the three storyboard artists on the episode. These changes will be made by the storyboard revisionists under the director's guidance. That's where I started on the show, as a revisionist. It's the entry level job on the story team, and by fixing and adjusting the storyboards you learn what works and what doesn't work in a scene.
So last fall they showed a scene I storyboarded at New York Comic Con:
I don't actually animate; I create a really specific template the animators work from. For comparison, here's the best version of the final scene that I could find:
Unfortunately it's oddly cropped, but you should be able to get a pretty good idea of how the animators use the storyboard to create the final animation.
I started on the show with "Wormquake" and served as a revisionist through most of season 3. As a revisionist I was able to storyboard a scene or two from each episode my team worked on, but I would never get a full "board handout," which is usually about 1/3 of an episode. I've been a full time storyboard artist since we started work on Season 4 last year.
It's a crazy fun job, and it's insanely fun and rewarding. It's also a TON of work. Usually a 7 minute section of storyboard will have around 800 drawings, all done in about 6 weeks.
So that's a little bit of what I do! I can't answer questions about super current stuff with TMNT or what's coming up in the show, but if you've got any questions about how animation works I'd love to answer as best I can!
-JJ
PS: I can't find too many clips of the stuff I've done online, but if anybody watches the show, these are a few of the scenes I storyboarded:
307 "Eyes of the Chimera" - I storyboarded the scene where Donnie is testing April's abilities with the flash cards.
310 "Serpent Hunt" - This is where the clips above are from.
313 "Battle of New York" - I storyboarded the little scene where Donnie injects the retro-mutagen into the Technodrome.
316 "Clash of the Mutanimals" - I storyboarded the brain worm scenes, first the Rockwell/Slash scene and then the Raph scene.
I'll update this list if people seem interested.
I've been floating around these forums since probably 1999. Way back then I was in 8th grade, 13 years old, and posting at JC.
Now I'm living on my own, 29 years old, and I've been working in animation. I've been working on Nickelodeon's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" series for just about 2 years now, currently as a storyboard artist.
I know I mentioned what I do in a post some time last year, but there's a crazy delay in animation: the stuff I'm storyboarding right now won't air for about 1 year. Yeah, I've got to keep my mouth shut about the scenes I'm working on for an entire year!!! So at that time I couldn't really talk about what I'd done, let alone show anything!
But now that it's been two full years, a lot of episodes that I've worked on have aired, and I wanted to share a few links and describe what I do a little bit.
So currently I'm a storyboard artist. We are the first people to visualize a scene. I literally take the script and I draw out the shots and the characters the way I think the scene should play out. We impact how comedic, how intense, or how exciting the scene is by our choices in camera angles, pacing, and character acting.
Once I finish a storyboard it goes to the director and the producers, and they'll make changes if needed. If I've done a good job, the only changes will be little things. Things like trimming the episode down so it's 21 minutes long, or tweaking things so everything hooks up between the three storyboard artists on the episode. These changes will be made by the storyboard revisionists under the director's guidance. That's where I started on the show, as a revisionist. It's the entry level job on the story team, and by fixing and adjusting the storyboards you learn what works and what doesn't work in a scene.
So last fall they showed a scene I storyboarded at New York Comic Con:
I don't actually animate; I create a really specific template the animators work from. For comparison, here's the best version of the final scene that I could find:
Unfortunately it's oddly cropped, but you should be able to get a pretty good idea of how the animators use the storyboard to create the final animation.
I started on the show with "Wormquake" and served as a revisionist through most of season 3. As a revisionist I was able to storyboard a scene or two from each episode my team worked on, but I would never get a full "board handout," which is usually about 1/3 of an episode. I've been a full time storyboard artist since we started work on Season 4 last year.
It's a crazy fun job, and it's insanely fun and rewarding. It's also a TON of work. Usually a 7 minute section of storyboard will have around 800 drawings, all done in about 6 weeks.
So that's a little bit of what I do! I can't answer questions about super current stuff with TMNT or what's coming up in the show, but if you've got any questions about how animation works I'd love to answer as best I can!
-JJ
PS: I can't find too many clips of the stuff I've done online, but if anybody watches the show, these are a few of the scenes I storyboarded:
307 "Eyes of the Chimera" - I storyboarded the scene where Donnie is testing April's abilities with the flash cards.
310 "Serpent Hunt" - This is where the clips above are from.
313 "Battle of New York" - I storyboarded the little scene where Donnie injects the retro-mutagen into the Technodrome.
316 "Clash of the Mutanimals" - I storyboarded the brain worm scenes, first the Rockwell/Slash scene and then the Raph scene.
I'll update this list if people seem interested.