Talking Whales and Transforming Surfboards

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything significant. I’ve been busy trying to figure out the best process for doing storyboards. When to do roughs? When to do clean ups? What should finalized boards look like? How do I break a scene into sequences? This week, I've storyboarded the scene where Vanessa boards the C Train and meets some interesting characters. In this sequence, we see Vanessa talk to a whale.

I’m so ridiculously proud of this sequence.

Taking time to nail down character acting and timing is everything in a scene like this, where we see Vanessa has a supernatural connection with the whale. This is the magic of animation, seeing this come alive in a way that wouldn't have hit as hard in a graphic novel.

Seeing my ideas come together through storyboarding has been the most rewarding part of this process. Even complicated ideas such as how to make the rebel characters’ surfboards go from backpack size to full size came to fruition.

Look! I made a transforming surfboard!

According to the progress chart I set up, the pilot has been storyboarded almost halfway. Not half bad considering I’ve been doing this project in my off time. If I can rough one scene a week, I can finish the whole episode in about a month and change.

Also, I’ll be in the recording studio this week with my animation partner, doing voices and working on getting sound lock on these scenes. Sound Lock is when the soundtrack for an animation has been finalized including voices. This makes it possible to finish the final timing on the storyboard art to ship to animation.

I can’t believe I’ve gotten so much storyboarded already. I’m so excited to show you more.

The full string out of the Surfboard Scene is available to watch for Patreon Video subscribers.

Storyboard Rough Test - Scratch Audio

So this is a slightly older storyboard test with lower quality audio than more recent tests. This is what we call in animation ‘scratch audio.’ This has been sitting on my Youtube as Unlisted for nearly four months. Let's share the wealth, shall we? This is how Vanessa gets manipulated into giving a very salty speech which we'll see next week.

It's probably some of my best scripted work. See why I've gotta roll into animation? Graphic novels can't allow me to scream at you. 

Scene Sheets

As I gear up for testing live footage in my animation software, I wanted to prepare myself some basic artwork sheets for the mood and the feel of the scenes. I call this little cheat my Scene Sheets.

Since I'm the only person who has to work in this pipeline at the moment, my scene sheets are a way to consolidate designs for which characters appear in the scene and how they should look on screen. Also for funsies I throw in a couple of storyboard panels that have a rough color key on them.

Normally that's the job of like three guys in a studio setting, but I don't have time for that. I'd rather get something close enough for me to get rolling with storyboard and animation tests.

 So this is some rough artwork for the opening sequence. We get hit with some wild imagery such as Vanessa's run in a party dress, her confrontation with Asa, a rough idea of what the Scum Lords will look like (surfer radical animal rights fighters).

Vanessa is the lead character of the story. She's going to start this scene in a moment of distress. I gave her a short party dress because stuff gets real i this sequence and she has to be able to move. I kind of imagine her outfit would flow like a figure skater. Except this would be a figure skater/high diver/surfer. So uhh, yeah the dress has to allow for free movement.

If you're a long time fan of my work, you might recognize some faces here. Asa is inspired by Biscuit from Misfortune High, except what if he was actually capable? Effectively a rich kid with too many weapons, power and privilege. And Marshall? If anyone remembers my very first webcomic (God I hope you don't) Marshall was the lead character. The whole point of that character was that he always gets underestimated by the people around him for being too young and seemingly inexperienced. With our new guy, I've doubled down on that by making him even younger and skinnier. Certainly not intimidating as a hand to hand combat fighter, but his physique makes him deadly on the waves.

So yeah then I throw some test panels off to the side of the characters. I guess this is my comic sensibilities coming out.

 For a later sequence, I created this scene sheet. This is to follow an event that takes place earlier in the story where we briefly have a flashback. Vanessa comes from a fancy private school where she's an underclassman and a diversity admission. She desperately wants to be cool and respected by her elders, but it's not going so great. I wanted to capture her bright, plucky, tries-too-hard attitude with a bubbly cerulean blue outfit. My official reason for giving her a different formal outfit than her elders is that she's an underclassman, but the truth is, I just like how fun it looks. I wanted Vanessa to look like a comedian and a butler at the same time. But like cute like a teenage gir.

Her so-called friend, Lyra, provides a unique challenge to Vanessa in this scene, so I wanted to give her a dark, severe outfit. Lyra is a ruthless upperclassman who loves leveraging her status to dominate others. She's a big, oppressive figure in the scene, so I went with a Victorian style dress. Nothing says oppression like the Victorian era. I feel like this makes you go "Oh she's the one in charge." And she does nothing good with that power.

Philippe is the guy who seems to have Vanessa thinking he's her boyfriend, but has his own agenda. Philippe is a young man sowing his oats, floating from girl to girl at Silver Needle Academy. Vanessa may be his latest victim, but she won't be the last.

Both Lyra and Philippe have an odd green tone to their skin and there's a big reason for that. There's a class of people in the story called the Silver Skins. And they're resource hoarders who have silverized skin no thanks to a genetic experiment gone wrong generations earlier. They tell the world they're suffering and persevering, but they're sailing rich and free as they always have. Lyra and Philippe belong to a class of rich elites that have blighted themselves in the name of improving themselves through science.

This is not based on a true story.

Anyway, throwing those extra color key/storyboard panels off to the side help me visualize the scene in terms of animation art.

We'll see how everything ties together when I have to start painting the background art.

I swear I know what I’m doing.

Laying Down the Pipeline

So I've been trying to figure out what kind of pipeline to establish to get Hurricane Vendetta going as an animation. The last time I made a long animation, I used some archaic digital tools. I wasn't going to subject myself to animating in Photoshop again. I needed to figure out what tools would help me create web-cartoon level animation that looked good, but made the animation process smooth and easy.

First, I had to figure out which program was going to make storyboarding easy. I don't have my ipad to do storyboarding anymore, so I looked into options that can work on my Surface.

Storyboarder

This program is lightweight, free, and easy to use. Storyboarder was good enough to test out some scratch audio with imagery. (See: Speech Test) It's not half bad to get something quick and dirty out. But if I wanted to make scenes longer than a minute with more camera work, I'd have to level up.

Storyboard Pro

 Toom Boom Storyboard Pro is a little more complicated than Storyboarder, but in my opinion the juice is worth the squeeze. Storyboard Pro gives me the option to board more than a minute worth of artwork at a time. Even better, I can import image sequences from Storyboarder, so I can work with something more light weight when I'm on the go. Storyboard Pro is a fairly powerful boarding program that I think is going to be the main workhorse for creating storyboards to be turned into final animation. 

It's figuring out these tiny bits of the pipeline that gets me to how I want to create this animation. Storyboard, Animation Program, Background art, all are different parts of the creation process. (Also, I get help from my partner as he's also working on his own animation research and development.) Once I get the best process ironed out, all that's left is the execution.

So let's talk final Animation Art.

TV Paint

TV Paint gets the job done. As far as animating straight ahead goes, I can throw down new frames to animate quickly and easily. And I got the artwork clean up to not look too bad. I think I might use this software for animating more intense sequences. I'll let you know after I've done more testing.

Toon Boom Harmony

I got the idea to try out Toon Boom Harmony from my friend Fable Siegel, the animation director for Lackadaisy. They recommended I try out this program as it's worked out pretty well for their pipeline. So I start throwing together animation artwork into this program. I add the character art drawn natively in the program as well as a hand drawn watercolor background. I dig the style of the artwork, feeling sloppy and indie while also giving us a feel for island life. As long as I kept the line weights steady, I felt like my artwork translated well enough to Harmony for animation. But how did animation itself work out?

Harmony Animation

I decided to take Harmony for a spin in terms of regular animation (just in case I wanted to do a sick ass opening animation). It's not half bad. I just have to figure out how to add key frames faster. I'm still learning. I feel like this program could create some very clean line work mixed with robust animation. I may not want to get this deep for animation for every shot, but this could come in handy for more "bigger budget" scenes or "character acting. Here's a little sample of how Harmony rough animation looks. (I should have a more cleaned up version of this in the coming weeks.

Okay that's all, folks. I can't wait to show you guys more!

-Love, Joolz

Storyboard Testing Begins

Since Hurricane Vendetta is slated to be an animated project I thought I’d get to storyboarding some test shots. I’m trying to teach myself Storyboard Pro so I can get rolling with doing longer animated sequences. I’ve learned from my Love Joolz stuff that I can do longer animatic videos.

So what I’m trying to do here is just figure out how to time silly cartoon sketches to voice acting. With these images, we see me messing with the style of how I want to do these boards. I feel pretty good at the direction so far, especially when adding color. We all know I have a thing for spot colors. I would LOVE to do this as a colored storyboard and turn it into something Love, Joolz looking. That would be neat.

But let’s be real. I fully intend to make this a final colored project. I’m me. This shit is gonna go all the way to the top.

This particular scene is a test shot of when Vanessa delivers a speech at at her preppy high school that makes the audience’s eyes water. But for all the wrong reasons of course. I cannot wait to act out her speech and show you the final product. It’s gonna be electric.

-love, Joolz

Designing an Antagonist

o alongside our main character Vanessa, I’ve been developing artwork for other cast members. Lyra is an antagonist character we briefly meet at the beginning of Episode 1 and will stay haunting us like a poltergeist for a while after.

Lyra is a hater, first and foremost. She has positioned herself as Vanessa’s senpai but otherwise hates her and wants nothing good for her. I love writing hater characters because it helps me explore the people who have hurt me in my life. What motivated them? Why do they make the decisions they make? I’ve attached some script to show how disrespectful and manipulative Lyra really is.

Side note: I can’t wait to draw Philippe, the terrible boyfriend, even though he’s such a tertiary character.

Back to Lyra. Her design was a bit of serendipity. I had been developing her look in a local art class I help out at, and I ran out of time to color her in, which is why I ended up with a sketch of her half done. But I thought it looked good. I liked the mostly white vibe of the private school uniform. It has this look of private school anime that I love. (Revolutionary Girl Utena was a formative experience for me). So I kept the jacket mostly white.

And Lyra’s ghost white skin has a story explanation. She’s what is known as a Silver Skin, which means she’s got a weird UV coating to her skin that makes it look gray. I drew influence from this early colonial painting I happened to see while on a museum trip with my mom. And like…those people in the paintings were white. Like creepy ghost white. I know the Spanish came from Europe but damn that was some white skin to the point the characters looked gray. Why the Spanish thought that creepy gray white skin was anything other than a blistering criticism I don’t know. But it’s to all our benefit cuz it looks cool in the story.

Anyway I’m gonna have more cool stuff to share next week now that I’ve got Storyboard Pro working. Whee! We love the progress.

-love Joolz

Designing Vanessa

The artwork for this week's post is the model sheets I'm trying out for the main character, Vanessa. Model sheets help me establish what my character looks like so I can keep her looking consistent in the story. You can see I'm trying to land that weird confluence of anime and funny pages in her artwork. In the final art piece, you can see the very first attempt I made at doing her model sheet, this time with markers. As you can see, I’ve been working on her design since July of 2023. I think I'm getting the hang of drawing Vanessa, so I'm excited to introduce you to other characters in the world.

In the story, Vanessa goes from Private school to Surfing Fool and I wanted to explore that in the first image. There's a certain buttoned-down quality to Vanessa in school that she gets to shed when she goes to Progress Island.

Why yes, I am calling the main destination in the story Progress Island, after the famous MST3K short about Puerto Rico industrialization films.