Once again, not much to comment on this chapter’s storyboards that differ from the final draft since it’s beat by beat. However, I bet you’ve noticed the cutouts by this point from my previous storyboards that are more frequent in this chapter’s storyboards. This is because my old process of drafting storyboards was somewhat all over the place… I originally drew rough sketches of scenes I envisioned randomly on scrap paper. The kind that isn’t suitable for archival purposes in terms of the paper’s weight and being non-acid-free. Cheap copy paper. Also, there was print on the back, so they weren’t suitable for scanning without the back end bleeding through to mix with my sketches.
The thing is, they were never meant to be kept in the long run. They were scraps I had on me during school, work, or wherever I was that had a pen and paper lying around that I could quickly jot down my vision at the moment. Like with brainstorming ideas, they tend to be fleeting, and I wanted to ensure I caught the scene as I imagined it as soon as it came to me in its roughest state at the very least. I simply wanted to know the overall pose and camera angle of these scenes. And they would often be out of order.
So when the time came to put the pieces together, I had to cut them out into squares and piece them in sequence to see how the story flowed. Then, I redrew the scenes more detailed and within order on a separate archival sketch paper, printed with a border template I made in Photoshop. However, sometimes, the scraps ended up conveying slight differences I liked better that I couldn’t replicate in my second redraw. A character’s pose and/or facial expression was drawn in a particular way that I wanted to ensure I copy when I eventually get to the final draft. So I ended up keeping some of the scraps and taped them to the proper scene as a reference just in case I needed to look back on it. Sometimes the mood I was trying to convey was better drawn crudely on scrap paper at the moment than when I tried to recreate it.
This approach wasn’t very tidy and often frustrated me trying to keep track of my scattered brain ideas, so I later went to digital to draw my storyboard ideas on my first iPad starting in 2019. It was far easier to sketch the rough idea and move them around within one file I know I can find later and arrange it to my liking without the tedious old fashion clippings. But I only did that at first because I was used to sketching traditionally and couldn’t find an electronic device I could feel comfortable drawing with until I got my iPad Pro. So, yeah.
On a final note, these pages have templates blown up compared to before. This was to make it easier for me to sketch out the frame layout of each page and know which scene goes where without having to draw them small. If there’s any lesson I can impart to you from this experience, it’s this: Always have a small, decent quality sketchbook on hand wherever you go to jot your ideas. Scan them, and then rearrange them to your liking on a computer. It’ll save you time and trouble.
