Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1260764
pedigree goes back to Return of the Jedi. His skillful storytelling and superb draftsmanship proved invaluable on Jon's previous tentpole movies, The Jungle Book and The Lion King. Phill's ability to beautifully draw every aspect of the Star Wars universe was inspiring to all departments. Norwood said, "…the Mando suit, spaceships, Baby Yoda, this is the most fun movie to draw yet." Joining us later, Dave Duncan created 2D storyboard animatics and drew many of the space travel shots and dogfights, using his expertise from storyboarding Space: Above and Beyond. The storyboard coordinator, Charlie Prestine-Lowery, seamlessly managed the workflow, in addition to prepping the boards for animatics. The storyboard department drew almost exclusively in Photoshop on Wacom Cintiqs, though in a pinch Norwood and I would thumbnail with pencil and pen directly on the script pages, and sometimes those would suffice as final boards. ith our ever-increasing workload, my team motto became, "etter done than finished." During this show, I'd developed a method of drawing very small, tight frames and found I could draw an entire seuence, four or five script pages, which would normally take a week or more, in a couple of days. My personal approach to storyboarding is to create clean, easy-to-read shots, with uncomplicated staging. Shown as a seuence, the scene should flow effortlessly, with filmic clarity. After getting a new script, my goal was to try to immediately storyboard as much as possible, to visualize the entire episode while the story was still fresh in everyone's imagination, especially Jon's. In the animation tradition, the boards were presented as oversized single frames, with dialogue and descriptions written below. The presentations, shown on a giant TV, came to be known as "click pitches." We would click through the dozens of jpegs, performing the dialogue, describing the shots and even doing sound effects for added "oomph!" Initially, these presentations were just to Jon, so he could experience what he'd written and get a sense of how well a scene, and ultimately an episode, played. Subsequent pitches would include Filoni, directors of photography Greig Fraser and Baz Idoine, Production Designer Andrew Jones and the visual effects team. ltimately, each of the five guest directors and the stars of the show would also view the click pitches. This way the entire team would see what Jon was visualizing in the episodes and allow them to perform their part. Also, in the tradition of Walt Disney's animation A. DRAWING SMALL FRAMES ALLOWED PHILL AND I TO COVER A LOT OF GROUND—FAST! PHILL'S BOARDS FROM EPISODE ONE, MANDO MEETS PELI MOTO. B. & C. EPISODE FOUR STORYBOARDS BY DAVE LOWERY. CARA DUNE MEETS THE CHILD. D. PHILL NORWOOD USING AN ANIMATION- STYLE STORYBOARD TEMPLATE IN PHOTOSHOP. NOTE THE DIALOGUE AND SHOT DESCRIPTION BELOW. THIS WOULD ALLOW US TO VOICE THE DIALOGUE AS WE DID A 'CLICK PITCH' PRESENTATION OF A SEQUENCE. E. PHILL NORWOOD EPISODE ONE STORYBOARD. F. DAVE DUNCAN'S STORYBOARDS. DUNCAN ALSO CREATED WONDERFUL ANIMATICS FOR EACH EPISODE "…LIKE A VISUAL TABLE-READING FOR JON…" C D E F