I have an idea for a new animated short film, so of course, one of the first things I think about is creating the storyboard. To storyboard my Floyd the Android shorts I used a very old version of Storyboard Pro. I was feeling it was time to update my software, but Storyboard Pro is now much more expensive than the old educational version I was using.
As luck would have it, my Facebook friend John Nicholas Pozega, of PozegaToons, posted a link to a new, FREE, storyboarding software. It’s called Storyboarder, and it comes from the production company Wonder Unit.
You will find the link to download the Storyboarder software here.
Storyboarder is available for Windows and Mac operating systems. I was able to download, install and open it in a couple of minutes. When you create a new project, it gives you the choice to open a script to work with or start a blank board. I selected a blank board, and it offers 6 of the most common aspect ratios to work from and one joke.
It has a very simple interface that I was able to work with pretty quickly.
It has helpful pop up tool tips, and a selection of grids that can be toggled on and off. For fun, it makes a scratchy pencil sound when you draw.
You can import drawn images. Apparently, you can use your phone camera to take a picture of an entire page of frames, import the image, and it will automatically split them up into individual images.
What seems to be the most powerful tool is its integration with Photoshop. You can send images to Photoshop, edit them, and when you save it, it goes back into Storyboarder. That puts a lot of power from Photoshop into Storyboarder.
You can time out your board images by frames or milliseconds. Finished boards can be exported to .pdf or animated .gifs. You can also send it to Final Cut Pro or Premiere through a series of .png images and a .xml for those applications to assemble them. There is no audio in Storyboarder, so you would need one of those programs to add it.
There are quite a few other features as well. Visit the download page linked above to learn more.
What I can’t find is much about layers. There are “clear layer” options, but other than that, no mention of it. And other than the tool tips, I haven’t found much documentation to look at yet. I did find some minor bugs, but I am definitely going to get out my Cintiq and give it a more serious try as soon as I can.
When creating a comic trio, you can either make them all very similar or each very different. Very similar trios are those groups of triplets, like Disney’s Huey, Dewey and Louie, or Hamish, Hubert and Harris from Pixar’s Brave. Triplets have a fairly specific use in comedy, so it is more common to create trios from individuals who are themselves unique.
The reason for making them different is to develop conflict within their group dynamic. While trios are often engaged in conflict with out side forces, the comedy comes from how they relate to each other. Most comic trios develop organically, but there is a formula you can consider for creating three contrasting personalities.
The best characters will reflect those traits we see in ourselves. How do you get three different characters who all seem similar to us in some way? You make each one reflect something common to all humans. The famed psychologist Sigmund Freud sorted out human personality into three components. The Id, the Ego, and the Superego. The theory is that everybody has these three sides to themselves, and together they make a whole.
The id is considered the most primitive of the three. It is like the child who hasn’t learned to wait to get what it wants. The character is impulsive, and often concerned with bodily desires. He or she can also be very emotional when meeting resistance. Often, this is the first, most easily recognized character.
The superego is the most thoughtful. It considers what is right and wrong. This is what is learned through society.
The ego tries to negotiate between the two others.
Here is a convenient graphic:
Sometimes the ego is the leader of the group, but they can simply be the protagonist with two very different buddies. They can also just be the nice, in between one that follows the others.
A good example from animation are the three main characters from the television show Futurama. Bender the robot is easily identified as the id. He’s boozy and loud, always looking for an easy way to get ahead of others. Leela is the smartest of the three, she makes good choices. Fry, the out of place human from the past is dim witted, but this is his story and the other two support him. He is the ego.
In the Powerpuff Girls, the superego is actually the leader, Blossom. The id is Buttercup, the feistiest of the three. Bubbles, the fun loving one, is the ego.
While looking for examples of movie trios for this post I found these next images.
The original three Ghostbusters. Bill Murray as the sloppy, skirt chasing Peter Venkman is the Id. Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) is analytical and cool, he is the superego. Ray Stantz (Dan Akroyd)is the one pushing the Ghostbusters business forward, he is the face of the group and works with the others as the ego.
Of course, the trios don’t have to be funny. The three pictured above are easy to identify. Gollum, the id, craves only the ring. Sam, the superego, only wants to take care of his friend Frodo. Frodo, the ego, is the protagonist of the story and he must work with the others as he sees fit.
Once you understand the basic idea, it becomes easy to recognize who is who in most any trio.
The conventional screen writing books will tell you that bad luck can get a character into trouble, but good luck can never get him out. That’s cheating. The character has to devise the solution and make it happen.
But when Jack Sparrow sails into port on the top of the mast of a sinking ship, stepping onto the dock as gracefully as you please, luck has brought him in that way. While Jack is a skilled and clever fellow, luck serves him very well through all his adventures. He has charmed the gods.
Buster Keaton’s character was also a lucky guy. When, in Steamboat Bill Jr., the house wall gets blown down on top of him, and he fits neatly through the window, it was pure chance that saved him.
What brought me to think of this was my re-watching of the original cut of The Thief and the Cobbler. Way back in the day, I had the chance to see the original cut of the film. I remember being blown away, especially by the war machine sequence of the climax. I just got around to watching the entire “recobbled cut” on youtube.
As I watched it seemed to me that the cobbler is very much a Charlie Chaplin style character. while the thief is Buster Keaton. In particular, his Keatonesque act is apparent during the war machine sequence of the climax. It is a must see sequence for anyone in animation. It is absolutely spectacular, and NOT included on the horrible “Arabian Knights” video that was made from the parts.
His goal is to steal the three golden balls that are perched at the top of a massive war machine commanded by the evil “One Eye”. The Cobbler shoots a tack, which starts a chain reaction that destroys the preposterously huge war machine. As this world is exploding around him, the Thief manages to avoid obliteration many times over. He casually walks and flies through the conflagration of falling elephants, waves of arrows, and giant spiked balls. It is Buster Keaton on acid.
Here are the two vids that contain the part I’m talking of, but if you haven’t watched the whole thing, start from part 1 and make it full screen.
When thinking of a funny animated character, sadness is probably not one of the characteristics that comes to mind first. But there is a long history of combining sadness with humor.
Sadness is a fundamental human emotion and it can be the secret ingredient to creating a truly memorable character. Characters who are sad have a couple of advantages. Often, they are up against a difficult situation, and their obvious vulnerability plays to human empathy. Sadness makes a character feel real and relatable. Sadness is a truly honest emotion. A character who is obviously sad is not putting up a fake front, so we know they are truthful to themselves, and we tend to believe in truthful characters. Sadness is an understandable emotion when it is caused by loneliness. We don’t care about people who are sad because they aren’t rich, or aren’t beautiful. Loneliness is the driver of romance, and romance is one of the great motivators of story. The sad character has room to grow. If it is a comedy, we know it will have a happy ending, and seeing how someone goes from sad to happy is a fundamental story arc.
Combining that with humorous behavior provides a powerful contrast. Sad funny characters are always awkward. Theres is the comedy of foolishness.
In feature film animation, where the story is a usually completed, the star usually finds romance. But still, beginning with a character who is admittedly sad, can be a great way to get the audience on their side.
In Pixar’s Ratatouille, when we meet the young chef wannabe, Alfredo Linguini, the very first thing we learn about him is that his mother has died. He is an awkward young man in need of a job. He is clearly worthy of our sympathy.
Alfredo Linguini from Pixars Ratatouille.
During that first scene Skinner, the head chef, pushes him and falls into Collette’s arms, and she literally tosses him aside. At that point, she has no attraction to him at all and becomes a firm instructor of kitchen skills. The audience know there is potential there for him to find something more.
Wall-E is a diligent robot who continues to work hard at his job, even though he is the only one left to clean up an entire planet. He is the definition of dedicated. But he is lonely, and he has been discovering items in the trash that make him wonder about the world that used to be. While watching an old musical, he sees human beings holdng hands, and wonders what it is like. Just watch these two gifs.
When the reconnaissance robot Eve arrives, Wall-E is both irresistably curious, and terribly frightened. When Eve suspects something moving in the area, she unleashes a powerful energy weapon in his direction.
You should note that in both of these examples, the love interest does NOT make things easy. It has to appear challenging, if not impossible. The experience of falling in love is one the most intense experiences in life, and it makes for great storytelling opportunities. Both Wall-E and Linguini behave like adolescent boys fumbling in their romantic endeavors. But they succeed in the end.
The relationship doesn’t have be romantic. One of the greatest animated sad characters was Dumbo, who was separated from his mother. I chose the image at the top because it shows Dumbo in some of his clown outfit. Notice the frilled collar. While performing in the circus, Dumbo has his face painted white.
The frilled collar, and white painted face are both associated with one of the archetypes of clown, the Pierrot. It is a very specific style of clown. He is the sad clown. The Pierrot evolved from the Commedia Dell’arte’s Pedrolino. While his character has been around for centuries, it still lives on in our culture.
From Wikipedia:
His character in contemporary popular culture—in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall—is that of the sad clown, pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. Performing unmasked, with a whitened face, he wears a loose white blouse with large buttons and wide white pantaloons. Sometimes he appears with a frilled collaret and a hat.
Perhaps some of you have seen the videos of Puddles the singing clown. He usually sings torch songs, songs of loneliness and rejection. His on stage persona is a Pierrot.
Pierrot is the pure form of this character. In the end, he doesn’t get the girl. You might think of the Simpsons character Milhous as a Pierrot. He loves Lisa Simpson, but will never be loved by her in return. Every episode he has to start over again as just himself.
While he makes us laugh, we also know that often this is how life is. In fact, while Lisa ultimately rejects Milhous, she herself has often been rejected, and is always moving forward with her own story.
You see, while we like characters who make us laugh, we can love the characters who both make us laugh and cry. It is not an easy thing to do. Here is one of my favorite funny/sad performances. This is Bob Maloogaloogaloogaloogalooga from the movie Big Man on Campus. You can see more from this movie in my other post on it HERE.
I am a big fan of eccentric dancing. Usually, eccentric dancing requires a high degree of skill. But there are some great examples that are funny because of how bad it is. I am talking here about professionals who dance to get laughs. This is bad dancing, not dancing badly. There are hours of real life bad dancers on Youtube, but those are just poor imitations of other dances. I am looking for someone who created a specific style of dance so it will look ridiculous.
These dances have two things in common. They look like they could be done by anybody, and they have tremendous enthusiasm. I would love to see someone animate a dance cycle that could make me laugh like these do.
We’ll let Julia Louis-Dreyfus get this bad dance party started.
Then there is Martin Short as Ed Grimley
Groucho Marx was primarily a verbal comedian, but he had some physical comedy chops for sure. Particularly with dancing.
Here is a video with a selection of his creative moves.
Jim Carrey in a tutu was a famous one.
This is comedian Nathan Barnatt, also making use of the knees going in opposite directions.
