An extended visit by a charming two year old and her baby brother, a storyboard assignment, Halloween, a snail slow computer connection and a storyboard test… all things that kept me away from this blog. Well, those and a lack of inspiration but one of those lame excuses is worth talking about here.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been writing or drawing or how much experience you’ve racked up or how many millions of dollars you’ve made for some company, sooner or later someone is going to ignore all that and ask you to do a test to prove that you can do a job you’ve been performing for years.
In my case, I had no hesitation. I’ve done plenty of storyboards throughout the years but usually bits and pieces or thumbnail roughs to let storyboard artists know what I wanted. This test was for a prime time animated series and, rightly or wrongly, the producers want to make sure the artists aren’t going to board it like some kids’ cartoon series. Again, we can debate the idea that the script and budget dictate the way an artist boards but we allow producers their insecurities.
Tests like these are invariably done for free. I don’t think there’s any union rule against it. If the industry is short of artists, you might not get away with it but now there are plenty of artists looking for work and more pouring out of art schools all the time.
As soon as I read the cover letter in the PDF, I knew I was screwed, at least potentially screwed. All tests had to be completed in Photoshop or ToonBoom Storyboard. No pencil or paper was to be used in the process. I flashed on my early days of story editing.
Just a few weeks after chipping their ideas into rock walls with chisels made of other rocks, screenwriters used these big metal things called “typewriters” to write their scripts. After you had written your masterpiece you usually retyped it, slowly, trying to make as few mistakes as possible because if you made a mistake you had to start the page over, or cross it out and write the correction over it by hand or use the white gunk that made Michael Nesmith’s mother rich to blot out the error and delicately type over it. This usually resulted in the white gunk chipping off and you’d restart the page anyway. If you came up with a better way to describe something or an improved scene, you’d try your best to talk yourself out of it. If you failed you’d restart the page again. The physical act of writing was much more tedious than it is now. Although, because it was a pain, you tended to think things out in more detail before committing them to page.
I moved from features to television animation just as personal computers were creeping into the work place. Soon every story editor had some sort of word processor on his desk but not every free lancer did. Story editors began to expect rewrites at computer speed while the poor writer was still pounding on the backbone of a Smith Corona dinosaur. Writers had no choice but to sacrifice their next paycheck to the high priests of KayPro, Atari, Commodore 64, Tandy and Apple. Actually Apple came later. Technology changed the time allotted for a rewrite, a polish and suddenly executives didn’t feel as restrained about giving major notes late in the process. It’s all “Find and Replace” isn’t it?
This same sort of sea change may be happening to artists right now. Nickelodeon Studios is a paperless studio. More and more Cintiqs are popping up on desks that no longer have a light table on them. Some of the top storyboard artists travel from studio to studio toting tablet laptops like the Toshiba M700 using programs like Sketchbook Pro. On the Hellboy Animated movies, we had one artist who didn’t send us boards at all. He sent an animatic that was generated as part of his digital process.
I do not have a Cintiq or a Toshiba or a Macbook turned Modbook (duhrool, duhrool). I’ve had a wacom tablet for years but rarely sketched on it. I used it for cleaning up art or coloring. Recently I started sketching on it but nowhere near enough to get my hand/eye coordination ready for my test. But I had no choice and dove in.
I survived. By the end of the week long test I was mostly comfortable with it. In fact I forced myself to do my storyboard revisions for my WB work assignment on the computer, printing them out and taping them to my existing pencil boards. There were just a couple of panels that I felt I needed pencil and paper to complete.
So if you’re not already, start practicing with your Wacom tablet, pen on table, eyes on screen. If you can afforded it, upgrade your tech so you can actually draw on the screen. If you need to be portable, there’s some decent options on the PC side and only the Modbook on the Mac side. Yes, I know the real “MacTablet” will be here any day but none of the rumors I’ve read talk about it being artist friendly. For now, I’m going to keep up my sketching, eyes and hands working on different planes, saving my pennies and hoarding my metaphorical bottles of White-out.
I have both a tablet laptop and a Wacom tablet, and I definitely prefer the Wacom. I find it very awkward to draw directly on the screen of the laptop monitor, since it doesn't have the same feel as pencil-on-paper, and it leaves smudges.
The tablet can totally mess you up if you switch from a smaller sized one to bigger, but I find it so much easier for digital work. I have been using a tablet for nine years, doing all my sketches, inking, and colouring in Photoshop. It's so much easier to delete mistakes without leaving behind messy lines, and inking is a dream.
The consequence to this is that I have absolutely no real media experience. I basically started with digital media, so I can't navigate my way way around inks or markers to save my life. I think when it comes to the art business, it's beneficial to have a well-rounded knowledge of traditional and digital media.
Posted by: Angeline | 11/05/2009 at 07:16 PM
Do you mean smudges on the screen? What kind of laptop tablet do you have?
Posted by: Tad | 11/05/2009 at 10:37 PM
It's a Gateway Tablet PC CX2724 (http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/showthread.php?t=3158). It's fairly outdated, I got it in 2006. I really like how the screen can flip around into a notebook, which isn't just good for drawing but for watching movies while traveling.
I usually just plug my tablet into the USB and draw through it that way, but I can use the pen that comes with the PC to draw directly on the screen too.
Posted by: Angeline | 11/06/2009 at 01:49 PM