Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1521473
MOOD BOARDS In television, where budgets are tight and efficiency is essential, simple techniques can go a long way for a Storyboard Artist. For example, a Dutch Angle—a classic cinematic technique in which the screen is tilted—can "make the audience feel that there's something wrong without actually spelling anything out and saying something's wrong," says Yonemura. And setting the tone can be as simple as less is more. Watching '80s and '90s animation, they observed that to create a mood when someone is doing something like a long speech, there will just be a slow pan over a background. Tricks and shortcuts are no substitute, of course, for artistry that ensures the emotional heft of a scene. Due to script changes, rewrites, and emotional beats that don't quite land right, it's not uncommon for a Storyboard Artist to revise another's boards. In Episode 3, Yonemura inherited a storyboard sequence where Sinister confronts Jean Grey in her bedroom, and Jean learns that she is a clone. "What the board artist originally gave me was a beautiful path of just the acting and the shots that we needed," they say, "and what I did was a lighting path … plussing them with this idea of—I want it to be a dark room, and I want there to be lightning outside the windows, and I want there to be mood lighting on [ Jean's] face." To produce a horror element, they worked closely with the editor to make sure the panels where they sketched the flash of light landed on Jean's face at just the right moments of dialogue. Creating the tone of a scene also requires the Storyboard Artist to focus on the characters themselves. "We initialize the acting," Jara says. The artist has to figure out who the character is to the story in the sequence that's being boarded. "I have to frame them in a way that shows that they're in power, that they're not in power, or that they're feeling lonely or scared," he says. In Episode 108, Jara worked on a scene in which Jean, Cyclops, and Cable are on their first mission together, sneaking into a villain's house. Cable is their son, but at this point they haven't spent time together because Cable was sent into the future when he was a baby. In the quiet darkness, they come across old photos, and Cable sees a family portrait of a mother, father, and child—something he never experienced. To show Cable's sense of loss, Jara says: "We have Cable look over his shoulder. He sees his parents. Then we cut back to Cable, and he carefully places [the picture back] on the wall. This big, strong character is doing something very gentle— [that's how we] make sure it's a moment that's preserved." This is the kind of scene where, in live action, simple facial acting could have done the heavy emotional lifting. But Kuo says facial expressions are difficult in animation, so the artists have to come up with other ways, besides a close-up, to convey a character's feelings. In Episode 102, an incident causes Storm to lose her mutant powers. Feeling apart from her fellow mutants, she decides to leave. But having her say good-bye to numerous other characters would have been time- consuming. "We needed to show [this] without showing her literally saying goodbye to people, but metaphorically saying goodbye," says Kuo. To address this challenge, Jean receives a letter from Storm, and Storm's farewell is in the form of a voiceover. As Storm talks about the meaning of connection and the grief of losing that, an efficient series of panels shows moments such as Jean with her baby and Rogue touching Magneto's hand. "It came down to trying to find compositions that really reflected [each] line," Kuo says. Yonemura also thinks that "if you can establish the environment, you can really showcase a lot of emotion." One of their favorite examples is in Episode 3. Sinister kidnapped and cloned Jean, creating "I have to frame [the character] in a way that shows that they're in power, that they're not in power, or that they're feeling lonely or scared." –Ibraheem Jara Images courtesy of Marvel Animation. SUMMER 2024 31