Storyboard Beats

*Updated*

Our first assignment for storyboard was to create beat boards from 2 poems that were given to us. We were to interpret each poem however we wanted. 

I had another idea for the Mistake poem that my instructor liked except the ending, so I decided to change the entire first one's story to what it is now. I will update this post later if I manage to scan those, but my scanner at home currently isn't working properly.

After pitching these beat boards we are to expand and actually storyboard one of them. My instructor extremely liked my Good Little Girl idea but thought that the story had already resolved. So I am currently in the process of elaborating on my A Mistake idea.

I found the process of figuring out a story was extremely fun, I was able to flex my storytelling imagination. My whole process was thinking of the first idea I had and then completely scrap most of it if it wasn't at all interesting. Surprisingly my prediction that my first ideas would be filled with cliches was true as I saw many other stories with similar ideas I originally had. That's not to say that my stories are free from cliches, I just think that these are stronger than what I originally had. 

Rough Work

Character development of Isabelle, my favourite is the bottom left. 

Two other characters from my original interpretation of the Mistake poem, the couple Bruce and Holly. I did keep the name Bruce for the bear in my final idea.

The two pictures above are roughs of first idea I had. The top one of the first page and all three panels in the bottom page were used to pitch. It involved a couple snowed in their home, Holly giving Bruce a snowblower as a gift, Bruce riding and crashing the snowblower into their home, and finally them celebrating Christmas while using the crashed snowblower in their home as a Christmas tree/furniture. It was a decent idea with an okay ending, I decided to change it because I wasn't really satisfied with how the plot develops, it required decent perspective/layout which I'm not so good at, and the fact that it was too "realistic" and not really animated. 

Early Bruce and Bib designs, Bib remained pretty much the same.

My original idea had Bruce swinging at the hive only to have it get stuck at the end of the stick he used. The bees would then swarm and attack him. This idea didn't work since in the story the characters didn't accomplish much. Plus I had no clue how to conclude it in the final beat. 

The final roughs of Bib and Bruce's designs. Keeping these character very shapely (oval and circle) helps a ton when having to draw many storyboards with them, and makes them extremely easy to identify.