Toon Boom Animation: Storyboarding for flim

Brent Dawes

Company
Sunrise Productions

Occupation
Writer and Director

Location
Cape Town, South Africa

Biography

Brent Dawes, 33, was born and brought up in Harare, Zimbabwe. After school he completed a National Diploma in Drama at Natal Technikon in South Africa. He then returned to Zimbabwe and worked as a copywriter in the advertising industry for two years. He left advertising to join a young team of inexperienced filmmakers to produce Africa’s first feature-length (73min) animation, The Legend Of The Sky Kingdom, as the animation director.

This led to further opportunities in 3D CGI animation, and Brent spent a year in Korea where he directed Jungle Beat, a series of 13x5min animated shorts. This serieshas won numerous awards and recognition at the world’s leading animation festivals.

In 2004 Brent wrote the screenplay for Once Upon a Stable, a 22 minute 3D CGI TV/DVD special. He cast and directed the voice over recordings for the film, which then won the award for best animation at the National Religious Broadcasters festival in the USA in 2005.

In early 2007 Brent completed the screenplay for an animated feature film called The Lion of Judah which is now complete and due to be released in 2010. Ernest Borgnine, Michael Madsen and Sandy Patti are among the talent who lent their voices to the film.

Brent is the writer of the full length CGI feature animation project called An African Tale. The project is in development and Brent directed the demo for the feature film. Currently Brent is writing and directing the second season of the Jungle Beatseries.

I was introduced to Storyboard Pro about a year ago and it really has been a revelation in the studio for two reasons. Firstly it cut out all the paper work, scanning, cropping and editing and rolled that all into one. Secondly it introduced a more structured pipeline going into production with being able to export individual shots with accurate frame counts. Storyboard Pro became the foundation for the edit, for shot naming and a whole lot more.

How long have you been in this profession?

10 years

What are your most important accomplishments?

Apart from my three kids...on a professional level I had the privilege of being lead animator on Africa's first feature length animation The Legend of the Sky Kingdom, I wrote what we believe to be Africa's first CG feature The Lion of Judah and I am the writer and director of the CG animated series Jungle Beat.

What kind of projects do you create storyboards for?

I'm not actually a storyboard artist myself, but I end up doing it because we haven't found the right person yet. Despite not being the most proficient at it I diligently board everything we do be it a 10 second advert or a 5 minute short. Our company is pretty focused on animation at present so all of our storyboards are for CG animation.

History with Toon Boom Storyboard Pro:

Do you create your storyboards using Toon Boom Storyboard Pro only?

Yes...almost
If not, what other applications are you using?
We use Final Cut Pro to export individual shots with their sound file attached. For some reason I can't seem to do this in Storyboard Pro.

Please describe your workflow

It varies depending on how clear what I want is in my head. If I have a reasonable idea in my head I will start storyboarding fairly detailed immediately. If I need to do some exploring I'll generally do that in very small thumbnails on paper, terrible little sketches that no-one else can interpret but me. I'll then draw them up in Storyboard Pro. Once I've got my sequence boarded I export it as a video and give it to our sound guy who does a rough pass with the sound. This helps give a better sense of the timing and if something seems off I'll edit the timing in Storyboard Pro. Once I'm happy that it's playing right I export the individual shots which are then assigned to the animators. The animatic I have created then becomes the foundation for the edit and as shots are blocked in animation they replace the storyboarded shots on the timeline in Final Cut Pro.

What are your top five favorite features in Toon Boom Storyboard Pro?

The timeline, being able to edit as I go is supremely helpful, the fact that it's so intuitive to control is a huge plus.
The naming conventions, being able to change shot numbers and have the subsequent panels and shots line up is like manna from heaven.
Layers! Being able to draw in layers is very useful!
Camera and layer moves, although I find the fact that you can only do one camera move per panel a little limiting, the fact that I can bring motion into the storyboards really helps a lot.
Vector based drawing, this is great as you can zoom in and out to your hearts content, select lines you don't like, manipulate them etc. In fact the whole drawing toolset is great for what I need...though my perspective drawing sucks, you couldn't put a button in that does that for me?
And a sixth! The ability to export as a QuickTime.

What Toon Boom Storyboard Pro features allow you to distinguish your storyboards and animatics?

Having not used other software I can't say what distinguishes it, but certainly from the way I previously worked the fact that I'm essentially working on the storyboard and animatic at the same time is wonderful!

Did you experience any productivity gains in using Toon Boom Storyboard Pro?

Most definitely. It cuts out a lot of manual labor. The fact that there's no scanning and cropping and importing and re-sizing is great. Plus the fact that you can edit as you go without having to export to a different program is tremendously efficient.