“Eliminate the superfluous”
One of my all-time favorite comic-book artists and animators is Alex Toth.
If you aren’t familiar with the master, he did a large volume of work for Hanna-Barbera in the ’60s all the way to the ’80s, including Space Ghost and Super Friends.
His comic-book work stretches back even further, to the ’40s (I believe), with Zorro and a number of other pulp heroes.
So, why am I singling out this one particular (superb) artist? Well, in all the time I’ve studied his work, there has always been one very clear statement he makes about drawing:
It’s a beautiful, simple statement– just like his work. Many of his other “rules” follow the same line of simplification. You can find a list of them here:
Some people would argue that you need to be more detailed or have more world elements in a story to be a successful storyteller. That’s great, if you want to work once a year, but real people need to get paid! Back in Toth’s day, they cranked out comic-book pages that weren’t as detailed as today’s art, but were nonetheless powerful, imaginative and clear.
So, how did he do it?
Looking at examples of Toth’s art, he has large simple shapes that do triple duty of defining edges, creating interesting shapes, and leading the viewer.
Even his design sheets were laid out like a full-blown illustration! Igoo, from Hanna-Barbera’s The Herculoids, is a perfect example of Toth’s genius. This is arguably as simple as you can make a character, but the design still withstands the test of time. It has a strong silhouette that’s simple to draw quickly, with clear signs of the actual physical composition of the character. It’s very graphic.
So, taking what I’ve learned from Toth and applying it to our lesson:
We are storytellers and designers. We have a very specific goal in mind to lead the viewers. Do you know what you need to get your point across?
Clarity!
You may want to draw the heck out of a certain background object that looks cool, but ask yourself if it’s important to the story.
Treat your storyboards more like traffic signs– meant to be read in the blink of an eye.
Just like the first pass at a script, take your character designs and boil them down to their essence. Make as few drawing lines as possible while making them recognizable. Work on a clear, unique silhouette of the character. Try to do a quick study of the character, filling a page with the same character over and over. Do a page of just facial expressions. Really break the character down and get used to them. Once you’ve done that, you can really crank out some boards with a wide range of emotions and poses.
Do that, and you’ve “eliminated the superfluous” in your characters.
We usually have an establishing shot at the beginning that defines the setting. These shots are usually a bit more rendered out than the rest of the backgrounds in the scene. It helps establish the world we’re telling our story in and invites the viewer in. Having that establishing shot be a little more rendered helps keep the rest of the scene fairly simple.
Just like your character, boil your scene down to it’s essence, or most important aspects. What do we need to tell this story? Is that fancy vase in the back of the living room important? Does it help to establish the character’s wealth? Is it an ancient family heirloom? Does it get smashed on a burglar’s head? If the answer to all of these is no and it lacks any other important plot point, maybe you shouldn’t worry about rendering it like a master still-life painter!
You should figure out what’s important to tell the story and include that. Look at that page of Zorro art by Toth– there are maybe four or five total background elements on the entire page, but you never feel lost as to where we are in the story.
As an exercise, try to create a space that is well-grounded and as simple as possible. Pick a place and then create a list of elements that define that place.
In, say, a gym, you might find:
- Weights
- A treadmill
- Towels
- Yoga mats
- Balls
- People working out
With this in mind, get to work on dressing your scene. Do the bare minimum to define your space– see how little detail and clues you need to get that space across to the viewer.
Do that and you’ve “eliminated the superfluous” in your backgrounds.
So, we’ve got characters and backgrounds simplified. What does that leave? For me, I’d argue lighting, or value.
It can be just as critical to a story, for many reasons. You don’t need to triple-light a scene or get a complete value range. Most of the time, you could get away with having three to four main values. Keep it simple. Use the light to separate foregrounds middle-grounds, and backgrounds.
If you want to render something and make it look amazing, that’s great. But maybe save that for another project– not storyboards. Speed really is important. It’s right under clarity.
Now, go try some of those exercises I mentioned!
Board on!
Wahab
PS. Do you have any drawing simplification tips? Don’t just hoard it– share it with the rest of us and leave a comment below!